Locked in a Keychain
by EdelweissSparkles
Summary: 15 years in the future. Tina is an ER doctor in NYC and Artie is a music executive out in LA. They lost touch at some point in college so when Artie turns up in Tina's hospital, the pair must navigate lost time, unanswered questions, and unrequited love.
1. Chapter 1

**Locked in a Keychain**

By Edelweiss Sparkles

A/N: This is a future fic and is slightly A/U – we are fast forwarding fifteen years into the future – Tina is an emergency room doctor in New York City, and Artie is a music executive out in California. They lost touch at some point early on in college, so when Artie turns up in Tina's hospital, the pair must navigate lost time, unanswered questions, and perhaps unrequited love.

Please read and review! I have an idea of where this story is going but I'm definitely open to suggestions!

Disclaimer: I don't own Glee or any of the Glee characters.

* * *

><p>She pushed the stubborn lock of hair that just wouldn't stay in place behind her ear once again and turned her attention back to the progress note she was writing in the patient's chart. The ER was fairly quiet for a Thursday night – she'd taken care of a five year old with a dog bite earlier in the evening and had just checked in on Mrs. Jones, a 65 year old with a kind smile who was going to be admitted for heart monitoring. As she dotted that last i's and crossed the remaining t's in the chart, Tina signed her name at the bottom and reached over to take a long sip of her now cold latte. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, savoring the moment of quiet in the normally bustling metropolitan hospital. As she opened her eyes, she could see Millie, the ER triage nurse, walking over to her with a new patient chart in her hands.<p>

"Please tell me that's an easy case that I can finish in the 45 minutes I have left before my shift is over," Tina said with a smile.

"Should be pretty straight forward," Millie replied, "looks like a broken finger; you want me to send the medical student in to look at it first so you can finish signing off on the charts?"

"Sounds like a plan." Tina turned her attention back to the stack of patient charts piled on the desk in the nurses station awaiting her signature. This was the part of medicine that she hated the most – the paperwork. It just didn't hold the adrenaline rush of being in a trauma room or taking care of patients. She hadn't minded the paperwork so much when she was a medical student, back when she was eager to grasp onto anything that was medically related, but now that she was a few years out of training, the sheer volume of charts and things that needed her attention and signature baffled her. It was like the paperwork multiplied exponentially as the day went on. Figuring the pile wasn't going to disappear any time in the near future, Tina grabbed the first manila folder in the stack and flipped it open. Glancing through it quickly, she affixed her signature at the bottom and moved on to the next one in the stack. In the background of her thought processes, she could hear the medical student in the other room talking to the patient with the broken finger; the laughter wafting out of the exam room was a pleasant, melodic sort of sound that made Tina smile. She was glad the patient seemed to be friendly – goodness knows she saw enough cranky patients each day that when an amiable one did come along, it always put her in a good mood.

A nervous shuffling announced the arrival of the medical student, and Tina glanced up at the young man.

"You ready to present to me?" she asked.

"Yeah – I just sent in the portable x-ray to get a quick picture of the finger so I can present while that's being done," he replied.

"Go on."

"The patient is a 32-year old man who presents with contusions, pain, and swelling in his left hand, specifically the left third and fourth digits. He states that he was reaching down to grab his keychain off of the floor of his taxi when the cabdriver accidentally slammed the van's door shut on his hand. He has full range of motion of the wrist but some pretty significant swelling in the hands and fingers and he wasn't able to move the middle finger or the ring finger too much. I'm getting an x-ray of the hand right now." The medical student looked up at Tina for her approval, she nodded ever so slightly, encouraging him to go on.

"Um, he has no known drug allergies. Past medical history is significant for lower extremity paralysis due a spinal cord injury at the level of L4 twenty-four years ago in a car accident; past surgical history includes several spinal cord surgeries. He's taking Coumadin, um, 10 milligrams per day every day, and…"

"Hold on," Tina interrupted, "he has an L4 injury from a car accident twenty-something years ago? Huh, I had a friend back in high school with the exact same injury. What did you say he was doing when he hurt his hand? Getting out of a taxi?"

"Yeah, one of the keychains on his keys fell off just as he was getting out of the van and I guess he was reaching down to grab them and the cabdriver was closing the door to the wheelchair ramp and his fingers got caught in the slam."

"Ow," Tina winced, "sounds painful. Must have been once heck of a keychain to be worth that pain."

"Kind of looked like a Winnie the Pooh key chain to me – I actually said the same thing to him – that must have been some keychain to be worth two broken fingers," the medical student replied.

Tina's head snapped up at the mention of the Winnie the Pooh keychain. She had the oddest feeling that the similarities were a little too uncannily similar to be simply a coincidence. A guy her age exactly, paralyzed at the waist, with a Winnie the Pooh keychain? She'd sent Artie a Winnie the Pooh keychain as a gag gift add-on to his Christmas present their freshman year of college. She had seen the miniature bear holding a tub of honey in one hand and a microphone in the other while out shopping with Mercedes and bought it for him, smirking as she anticipated his response to the stuffed keychain. She knew it wasn't necessarily his style, but that he would humor her and use it on his keys. She'd actually grabbed one for herself as well, and the little creature still resided on her keys to this day, currently nestled safely in her purse in the doctor's locker room.

Not wanting to let on to the medical student that she was thrown off of her normally calm demeanor by this one random patient, Tina composed her features into what she referred to jokingly as her "doctor face" and started walking towards the exam room. Just as she was pushing open the door, she turned to the medical student and asked casually, "what did you say the patient's name was again?"

The medical student flipped to the cover page of the chart and glanced up for the patient's name just as Tina turned her head to greet the brilliant blue eyes of the patient seated on the hospital stretcher.

"Artie" she whispered.


	2. Chapter 2

"Mr. Arthur Abrams" the medical student finally announced looking up from the chart in his hands.

The room was silent minus the shuffling of the medical student, who stood behind Tina waiting for her to greet the patient. Her usual – "Hi, I'm Dr. Cohen-Chang, let's see if we can get you taken care of right away" – escaped her as she stared into the depths of a pair of eyes that should have been unknown to her yet were so unreachably familiar.

For his part, Artie wasn't sure he remembered how to breathe – there was no sign of the silver-haired, white-coat wearing elderly male doctor he had been expecting in his head – instead, he locked eyes with a stunningly poised vision from his past. As his eyes unabashedly moved from her face and down her body, he couldn't help but note that this wasn't the same girl he remembered sharing headphones with; this wasn't the same girl who made balloon animals with him and sent him boxes of silly knickknacks while the two of them were three thousand miles away from each other at their respective universities. In her place was a confident, serious, undoubtedly smart and jaw-droppingly gorgeous doctor. The blue streaks that had defined her hair in high school and the early college years had been replaced by a sensible, chic, highlighted layered cut, pulled back lazily into a low ponytail. The distinctive dresses and combat boots, and arm warmers and striped socks of years past were replaced by light blue scrubs and a long white coat, bearing the embroidered emblem of her success – Tina Cohen-Chang, MD.

Tina was the first to snap out of their silent reverie. Glancing at the now-confused medical student and daring him silently to have the audacity to ask why she and the patient had been drinking each other in, she plastered on a smile and walked over to Artie's bedside.

"Artie Abrams," she teased, "if you wanted to see me, all you had to do was call – there was no need to break two fingers to get here."

The medical student's eyes darted back and forth, watching their interaction yet not daring to ask whether Dr. Cohen-Chang and this patient had a history.

Artie chuckled. Her voice was the same sweet, sultry tone that he remembered, but the Tina he knew in high school would never have opened a conversation with a statement so flirtatious. Deciding to rise to the challenge, he pushed aside his surprise at seeing her and replied, "Well, I figured it's been more than ten years – why not come back with a splash."

He shrugged his shoulders, being careful not to move the swollen left hand, and let his eyes twinkle at her shocked expression. They had never engaged in flirty banter like this – their friendship had always been easy and comfortable – no games and certainly no need for witty one-liners. He always "got" her and had always been able to read her like an open book but at this particular moment – whether it was because he hadn't seen her in more than a decade or because she was suddenly the face in the physician's coat – he couldn't put his finger on just what it was that she thought about seeing him again.

Reaching for his injured hand, Tina hid her eyes between a veil of hair that fell around her face. She silently thanked her stubborn hair for falling out of the ponytail and allowing her the privacy to compose herself before she had to look into Artie's eyes again. She gently moved each of his fingers with her right hand while holding on to his wrist with her left. She noted the absence of a wedding ring, and wondered if one simply didn't exist or if he had taken it off before the swelling took over. As her fingers hit a particularly tender spot on that empty ring finger, he gasped and recoiled slightly in pain. Her hand shot out quickly to brace his upper arm, reassuring him that it was okay and feeling the his arm muscles twitch slightly under her fingers.

"Do you have the x-ray?" she turned and addressed the medical student, letting go of Artie's hand to reach out for the films. Clipping the scans onto the lightbox in the exam room, Tina studied the x-ray silently, pointing out to the medical student the points of interest on the black and white image of Artie's hand.

"What do you see?" she asked.

"Um, I guess – I think he has a broken finger? Two actually – the third and fourth. Right here, at the proximal interphalangeal joint."

"Okay, and what do we call that?" Tina asked.

"A broken finger?"

"Okay…otherwise known as - he has an avulsion injury here and here," Tina chuckled as she pointed out exactly where the tiny splinter of bone had broken off from the joint, "we'll put a splint on it for two weeks and he should be as good as new."

Artie watched the interaction between Tina and the medical student intently. It was strange to him to see her take on this new role – not the teaching part, he'd always known that she was an excellent teacher from all the tutoring she had given him in his math homework in high school. It was the confidence and the no nonsense attitude with which she spoke to the student – pushing him just enough to force him to answer her questions yet gently backing off and helping him learn. She commanded a degree of respect and even a sliver of fear from the young man.

Tina turned her attention back to him and there was something in her eyes that he couldn't pull apart. A screen that he couldn't get past – a physical manifestation that separated this act that the two of them were putting on from the intense feelings simmering just below the surface. He couldn't help but wonder if he had any part in putting that screen there – the extracurriculars that took up his time in college, the excitement of the new friends he had made, the ever growing gaps between their phone calls, the widening of daily, almost hourly text messages to the occassional email at Christmas or on a birthday. He softened his expression to take in the new Tina standing before him – not quite Tina, but the _Dr._ Tina Cohen-Chang. It was different, but then again, time had that effect on things.

"So I'll need two finger splints – get the blue ones – and some padding and a thin ace bandage. We'll start with that until the swelling goes down," Tina instructed, sending the medical student on his way to the supply closet.

As the door to the exam room shut quickly with the bewildered student's departure, Tina turned to the man on the bed and studied him. Really studied him this time. His hair was still the same messy but coiffed do that he had sported in college. His glasses were thinner, rimmed and perched casually on his nose, seeming to magnify the orbs of blue behind the lenses. He'd switched out the khakis and sweater vests for a thin, woven cotton pull-over and slim cut pants – sophisticated yet hintly at a keen sense of fashion. His mouth twitched in a slight smile as he waited for her to finish her less-than-subtle examination of him and when her eyes finally met his again, she took the last four steps over to the bed and fell into his arms, wrapping herself around his upper body and letting her hair fall into his face. As he breathed in the scent of her shampoo and snaked his uninjured good arm around the petite woman to pull her closer, he noted that despite all the changes – the passage of time and the arrival of adulthood, there was one thing that was still undeniably the same – Tina Cohen-Chang fit perfectly into his arms.

* * *

><p>AN: Thanks for reading! I'll be updating soon - I have a next few chapters written but I'm definitely open to suggestions! Please leave a review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	3. Chapter 3

After what felt like both hours and mere seconds, Tina pulled away and straightened back up, adjusting her white coat and tossing her hair back behind her ear as she stood. She smiled at him, this time allowing the smile to reach her eyes but not quite lowering the screen that separated the new Tina from the Tina who he remembered. Sensing that despite her newfound confidence, Tina was waiting for him to speak, Artie cleared his throat and said the first thing that came to mind.

"Hi."

He silently kicked himself for the brilliance of that comment. Of all the things that he possibly could have said to her after so long, apparently "hi" was as good as it was going to get.

"Hi," she replied softly.

"You're a doctor," he said, stating the obvious.

Tina laughed gently and readjusted the stethoscope hanging around her neck. "I'm a doctor," she confirmed.

Silence fell over the small room again as Artie and Tina struggled to rekindle more than a decades worth of conversation. He wasn't sure whether it was acceptable to jump back in, pretending as if the past twelve years hadn't passed in the blink of an eye. This was Tina – the girl who at one point knew everything. She had been his best friend, but time and distance had caused them to drift apart. He was sure that neither of them could have ever thought that they'd end up here, virtual strangers struggling to reconnect.

She'd always thought that Artie would be there in her life – a constant, steady presence. It wasn't that he had left, or that she had chosen to break the friendship. It was almost as if they started living their lives, and woke up one day to find that what had been a best friend type of relationship had evolved into acquitances, and eventually, into something akin to former classmates. What had life been like with him constantly by her side, and how had she learned to live without him there?

The arrival of the medical student back into the exam room broke their intense gaze, and Tina cleared her throat softly as she reached to take the supplies from him to bandage Artie's finger.

"You know what," she said to the young student doctor, "I can take care of this on my own, why don't you take off. I'll see you tomorrow morning for rounds."

"I don't mind staying," the medical student started, "I can help you splint the finger."

"No," Tina insisted firmly, "go home. Go sleep."

Artie smiled as he watched Tina dismiss the medical student. He was reasonably sure that she wasn't angry with him, which was a good start. How ironic that the cause of this whole emergency room debacle – his attempt to save a Winnie the Pooh keychain gifted to him by Tina so many years agao – would actually be the one thing that brought him back to her. The pain of Tina pulling on his ring finger startled him back into reality and he hissed as she readjusted the splint and wrapped it with tape to secure it in place.

"Sorry," she said softly, "I'll be finished in just one second. It's going to hurt for the next couple of days though so I'll give you some prescription strength ibuprofen for the pain."

"Did, did he tell you how it happened?" Artie asked tentatively.

"To your finger?" Tina replied with a slight smile, "he said you slammed it in a taxi door." She wasn't sure why she chose not to bring up the rest of the details, but somehow she wanted to hear it from him directly.

"Pooh bear fell off of my key chain," Artie smiled, "I was reaching down to grab it when the cab driver slammed the door on my fingers. I was trying to rescue Pooh."

Tina giggled as she put the final clip on his ace bandage and returned his hand back to him. She met his eyes once again and debated how to proceed. Part of her wanted to catch up with him for hours and hours, to find out what he'd been up to all these years and what his life was like now, but the sensible part of her knew that it wasn't as simple as picking up where they left off. Although they hadn't had a big blow-out or argument that led to the loss of contact, the fact that they'd merely drifted apart seemed almost worse.

"So…" she started.

"I missed you," Artie breathed quietly. "I can't believe it's been more than ten years that I haven't seen or really heard from you," he said with more confidence, and then continued hoping he wouldn't lose his nerve before he finished what he had to say – "I don't know what happened to us but it was like you got caught up in your life and I got caught up in mine and before I knew it, you weren't my best friend anymore. And I don't know what to do about that but I'm in this ER and I'm three thousand miles away from home and I broke two fingers trying to rescue a goddamn stuffed Pooh bear – and Tee, there's gotta be a reason for all this."

"I miss you," he said again, letting out the breath of air that he didn't realize he'd been holding.

"Wow," Tina giggled, "I'm glad the word vomit thing you had going on still hasn't changed."

That seemed to break the tension that had been building up in the room, and Tina and Artie both collapsed into a fit of giggles. It was both surreal and yet not at all the way they melded back into their old routine. Tina could see that the cute little laugh lines Artie always got when he giggled were still there, and Artie knew that he would recognize her adorable laugh anywhere.

It had been more than a decade since he'd last seen his best friend and to hell with social proprieties, Artie decided. "Coffee?" he asked, "do you drink coffee?"

Tina had a confused look on her face to his sudden question. "Are you kidding me?" she asked, "I'm a doctor – of course I drink coffee."

"No, I mean do you want to go get coffee? Now? With me?" he clarified with a smirk.

Tina glanced up quickly at the clock hanging on the wall above the door to the exam room – 11:58pm it said. "I'm officially off in two minutes – let me just go sign out my patients to the on-call resident. You okay to hang here for a couple of minutes? I'll come get you when I'm done."

"Sure thing, _Dr. Cohen-Chang,_" Artie replied, putting special emphasis on the "doctor" part of her name.

"You're such a brat sometimes," Tina replied, pushing open the door to the exam room, "I'll be right back"

/**/

Less than fifteen minutes later, Tina and Artie were huddled in a corner booth in her favorite twenty-four hour café not too far from the hospital. Artie had transferred himself out of his chair into the cushioned seat of the booth and Tina found some degree of comfort in noticing that his chair still looked the same as she had remembered. She'd opted for hot chocolate in lieu of coffee, not wanting any extra caffeine that late at night. Artie had followed suit and was also sipping slowly from a cut of warm Mexican hot chocolate with whipped cream. He smiled at her from behind the fluff of whipped topping piled atop his mug and sighed.

"This may be the best hot chocolate I've ever had," he said with a satisfied moan.

"It's the secret homemade marshmallow they hide at the bottom of the cup," Tina explained, running her fingers along the rim of her mug and wiping it clean of any leftover chocolate residue from her earlier sip.

They lulled back into a silence – not entirely comfortable, but not uncomfortable either. An old Beatles song came on softly over the radio, and Artie unconsciously started humming along, tapping his finger on the table ever so slightly in beat with the song. She smiled slightly at him, wondering just how to start their conversation.

"What are you doing now Artie?" she asked, figuring she'd jump right in with the questions.

"Music producing," he replied quickly, "executive producing a couple of newer artists and working on discovering some cool new acts."

Tina smiled, he was doing exactly what she would have pegged him as doing back in high school. She always knew that music was in his veins and that he'd be drawn to it, if not as a performer than certainly as a key figure in the industry.

"You're a doctor…" he started, looking at her pointedly at her scrubs. She'd ditched the white coat in favor of a light trench coat and let loose her pony tail, but kept on her blue scrubs and hospital shoes.

"I am," she confirmed, "never thought that would happen, did you?"

"Well, it's unexpected, but certainly not beyond the realm of possibility."

"I took a class on the human body and philosophy in college, and one thing led to another, and here I am," she explained, "it's weird, being in the ER with all the people and the activity and the adrenaline, sometimes it almost feels like I'm back on stage and it's those three seconds before the curtain goes up" Tina mused.

They each went back to their cups of hot cocoa, taking a sip and letting the warm liquid roll around their tongues before swallowing almost in sync.

"Are you still seeing Hannah?" she blurted out, asking the question she'd been itching to know the answer to since she saw his ringless finger earlier in the evening.

"Hannah?" he asked with a confused expression, "oh! Hannah! No, god we probably haven't really seen each other since a year or two after college," he explained with a smile. "How do you even know about Hannah?"

"Not from you, that's for sure," Tina replied as laugh, "actually, I distinctly remember you specifically talking to me about everything _except_ Hannah back in sophomore year of college. I had to find out from Kurt that you were even dating her!"

"That's rich coming from you, Miss-let's-not-tell-Artie-I'm-dating-a-new-guy" he replied in a banter.

Tina laughed out loud this time, and met the twinkle in Artie's eye. "We never were great about keeping up on each other's love lives, were we?" she remarked with a chuckle.

"Nope," he replied, popping the "p" like a little boy.

"So tell me then, now that we've established that we are mature enough to have a real conversation – what goes on in your love life, Artie Abrams?" Tina asked, leaning in slightly with her elbows propped up on the table and supporting her chin with her hands.

"Jumping right in with the tough questions," Artie teased. "Nothing really exciting right now," he explained truthfully, "haven't met the right girl."

"How about yourself?" he asked, trying to mask the fact that he was just as curious about her as she had been about him. The fact that Tina didn't wear a ring on her left hand didn't go unnoticed by him, nor did the fact that her right ring finger was occupied by a single band with a rose etched on it which looked suspiciously like it _might_ have the potential to be a promise ring.

"Nope," she replied, echoing his earlier pronoucement, "no time, not the right guy, not able to commit – you name it, I've probably been there."

"Well aren't we just a pair of losers then," Artie joked, "nothing has changed at all since high school."

They both laughed out loud this time. For all the worrying about how to jump back into a friendship that had been abandoned more than a decade ago, Tina found that she was just as comfortable with Artie as she had always been. He was still the same funny guy he had always been, and he still 'got' her the way he always had. In a way, it was almost as if the past ten years had never happened, and it was just yesterday that they were on the phone planning a Christmas break back in Lima. And yet, looking across the table at the man sitting across from her, with his hair pushed haphazardly to the side and his glasses framing his face, Tina knew undoubtedly that this wasn't the same boy she'd known once upon a time – he was a man now. More mature, more confident, more…chiseled.

Artie couldn't take his eyes off of her. He was transported back to all of their days spent sitting in the booths at Breadstix just passing time and telling silly jokes to make each other laugh. He found his heart lightened by her announcement of her struggles in finding love – not because he wanted her to be alone, but because he wanted his best friend back for himself for just a little bit – to get to know her again, and to catch up on all of the years that they had missed. He wasn't sure just how they'd managed to lose more than a decade of their young lives apart, but now that he had Tina Cohen-Chang back in his life, he was determined not to let her out again too easily.

* * *

><p>AN: I know it's long, but I wanted to get the plot moving a little bit. Please review! I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	4. Chapter 4

It was close to two in the morning by the time Tina and Artie said their goodbyes, he on his way to his hotel room to catch some sleep before his meetings the next morning, and she back to her apartment to try and squeeze in a few hours of shut-eye before hospital rounds at 6am.

Walking in to her immaculately decorated one-bedroom condo in midtown Manhattan, Tina's eyes drifted over to the photo collage hanging above the piano in her living room. It was there, and only there, that any memories of her high school self still lived. She kept the photos in the collage – of New Directions, of high school, of the early years of college – to remind herself of not only some of the happiest times of her life, but to remind her of what true friendship had felt like back in high school, when life wasn't complicated by work and grown-up responsibilities. Her gaze caressed softly over her favorite picture in the frame – it was an impromptu shot taken by Finn senior year of high school during graduation rehearsal; the members of New Directions were spread out haphazardly on the floor of the gymnasium waiting for graduation rehearsal to begin – Tina was giggling at a page in the yearbook with Mercedes, their heads huddled together and her head resting gently against Artie's legs; Quinn, Santana, and Brittany were also looking on, secretly sharing a joke that only the three of them understood but sharing their laughter with the rest of the glee club; Rachel was sitting on the other side of Artie, clearly waiting for Finn to return from playing photographer, and Puck was standing behind Artie, hand raised in the air mid-fist-bump. It was the comfort and the simple joy in the photo that jumped out at Tina, a reminder that this group of disparate and seemingly unrelated individuals could somehow mesh together to not only make beautiful music, but to also make a family – a glee club family. She scanned quickly over the other pictures – of Christmases and Halloweens gone by, of Artie and her before leaving for college, and of Rachel, Mercedes and her exploring New York City in the first weeks of university life. Tina was glad she had reconnected with Artie, but she couldn't help but wonder what life or that picture frame might have looked like had he not disappeared from it for so long.

With a restless sigh, Tina fell into the soft pillows of her bed, knowing that she was likely to face a fairly sleepless night. She had never been a great sleeper, especially when something was on her mind, and she knew that her thoughts this particular night were racing a little too quickly for her to get much rest before her next shift. Images of her experiences since the last time she and Artie had really talked kept flashing by – her decision to go to medical school, her graduation from college, the difficult first days of medical school and the excitement of her rotations as a medical student, her three years of post-medical school training, and finally, her ascension into the role of attending physician in the ER, and the fulfillment of a dream that she never would have believed she had. Mixed in with her academic and professional accomplishments were other scenes of days gone by – her first college boyfriend, her first true heartbreak, the numerous dates she'd been on over the years, moving in to her first apartment, watching Rachel headline her first show on Broadway, and many, many more. Buried in those images was one that she had hoped to forget – one that she was the least proud of – it was of the look on Artie's face one night during freshman year of college, when he'd flown out to New York to visit her and they'd attended a party thrown by one of her friends – and Tina, being slightly tipsy and feeling fluttery butterflies towards the cutest guy in her philosophy class, had allowed the cute boy to kiss her lightly by the window, only to turn around and find Artie staring into his drink, pretending not to have noticed her canoodling in the corner. They had never talked about the incident in the years since, and at the time had simply gone back to being best friends, pretending as if it had never happened. But Tina knew, if she absolutely had to put a pinpoint on when their friendship had started to drift, it was because of what she did that night in the moonlight at a drunken, college party. She knew that neither she nor Artie would ever admit to that being the impetus for their drifting apart, but it was the spark that led to conversations moving towards his classes and her activities, rather than the inside jokes they once shared. And once they didn't have high school, or their silly friendship, or their mutual experiences in common anymore, the ease with which the frequency of the phones calls decreased was almost too simple. Instead of picking up her phone to text him every time she saw something silly, she started turning to Mercedes or Rachel instead, telling herself she didn't want to bother him with the immaturity of her silliness. It wasn't that he wasn't her best friend anymore, it was simply that their friendship had changed, had evolved into one that somehow became more serious, and perhaps more strained.

Across town, Artie too lay awake in his hotel room, staring out at the lights of New York City through the large window but focusing only on the fact that Tina had waltzed back into his life in his mind. With a sigh, he sat up and reached over to the nightstand for his laptop, signing in to skype and calling his sister Arianna, who was doing an internship in Paris and with the time difference, the only person he could be sure was awake at this hour of night.

"Hey little bro, what's up?" she greeted him, her face popping up on the small screen on his computer.

Artie held up his hand silently, saluting her with the two fingers bandaged in splints and chuckling at her wide-eyed expression upon seeing his injury.

"What the hell happened to you?" she asked incredulously, "did you break your hand?"

"Just two fingers," he explained with a laugh, "and you'll never guess who my doctor was in the emergency room."

"Tina," she replied without blinking.

Artie sputtered, picking his jaw up from the bed and opening and closing his mouth several times, looking for words – any words at all – to say in response. When his brain failed him, he settled for narrowing his eyes and fixing her with a glare through the webcam of his laptop, hoping it negated the goldfish imitation he had done for her just now.

"How the hell do you know that?" he finally asked, still thrown off by her smug expression.

"I heard through the grapevine that she'd gone to medical school at some point, and you've got a weird expression in your eyes, the same one you used to have whenever I'd walk in on you watching old videos of glee club," she replied with a satisfied smirk, feeling quite pleased with herself that she'd managed to read him so easily.

"I do _not_ have a weird expression in my eyes," Artie insisted, figuring that was the easiest battle to pick right now, "and why didn't you tell me that you knew she went to med school?"

"You never asked," was her only reply.

"What else do you know about her?" Artie asked, trying to be nonchalant about the question.

"Honestly little bro, not much more than that. I thought she was your best friend, shouldn't you be the one with the answers?"

"Well, you know how that went," he replied sadly, "god, I don't think I've really had an honest to goodness conversation with Tina since sophomore year of college. Maybe junior year."

"You mean back when you were hiding Hannah from her and pretending that absolutely nothing had changed in your friendship?" Ari pointed out teasingly, "I still don't understand why that was such a big deal to you – I told you that Tina would understand – it's not like you guys didn't date other people in high school."

"It's not about dating other people," Artie insisted, "Mike and Brittany were different – we were around each other all the time and we could watch that kind of happen. But college, it was like boom, one day there was just this other person there. I wasn't going to go up to her and be like, Tina, this is my girlfriend Hannah, and I really like her."

"What you really mean is that you couldn't get over her making out with some guy at a party and somehow your guilty conscience didn't want her to watch you make out with Hannah," Ari replied jumping straight to the point, "and let me just say, you guys made out a lot. It was disgusting."

"Hey, she was pretty cute," Artie replied defensively.

"Uh huh," Ari replied. "But if I recall correctly, I remember you telling me that Tina and Mercedes used to call her horsemouth girl or something like that," she added, her eyes sparkling with suppressed laughter.

"Yeah," Artie chuckled, "they really didn't want me to find out about that nickname. Kurt can't keep a secret at all."

"So what happens now?" Ari asked quietly, silently knowing that the reminescing was just Artie's way to trying to avoid the real topic of conversation.

"I don't know," he sighed. "I'm just glad to have my best friend back in my life – all that silly stuff from college – the secrets and the boyfriends and the girlfriends and all that – it all seems like so long ago now."

"But at the end of the day," he continued quietly, "she's out there being this amazingly gorgeous and smart doctor, and living her life in New York. And I'm still that guy from high school in a wheelchair. She can move on with her life – but I'm never going to be able to change this."

"Oh Artie," Ari sighed quietly, wishing she could reach out and just grab on to her little brother in a tight hug and never let go. It grabbed at her heart to see him in pain over his disability, and if she were honest with herself, it had been a long, long time since Artie had expressed any sort of frustration or self-doubt about being in a wheelchair. He'd long ago accepted the cards that life had dealt him, and she thought that he'd long ago made his peace with it.

"Look at me," she commanded through the screen, "you know that the wheelchair has never been an issue for Tina. Ever."

"And furthermore, I think she'd be so disappointed in you to see you like this right now, and honestly, if I were her, I'd be a little offended that you thought so little of her to think that the wheelchair would even be an issue."

"I know," Artie replied softly, "I just want her to be happy. And I'm just happy having my best friend back." He smiled warily at Ari through the laptop, putting on a brave face. He knew that that was truly all that he wanted – for Tina to be happy.

"And I mean, I'm a pretty awesome catch, aren't I?" he joked, watching as Ari laughed at him and giggled.

"You totally are," she agreed, "it's not every day that you meet a hot shot music producer. How many copies did that last CD move again in the first week? Something like six hundred thousand in three days?" she teased.

"Six hundred and fifty," Artie corrected with a grin.

"Just talk to her," Ari encouraged, "I used to walk in on you guys just laying there doing nothing in high school, having silent conversations with your eyes. Just talk to her."

"If only it were still that simple," Artie mused.

"It is, little bro," Ari insisted, "if this is the Tina that I knew and you knew, it really still is."

Artie sighed, thanking Ari for humoring him and wishing her a good day at work. Shutting his laptop, he glanced out the window once again and noticed that the lights of the city were slowly being replaced by the rising sun. As the glow of the golden embers from the east slowly began to drift into his room, Artie took a deep breath, watching the rays of the new day illuminate his home away from home little by little, one streak at a time. As the new day dawned through Artie's hotel room window and Tina's bedroom window in the city of dreams, Artie grabbed his phone from the nightstand, quickly typed out a message to the newly created contact, and figured – why not.

To: Tina Cohen-Chang

Message: Can I take you out to dinner tonight?

Hitting send, he tossed the phone on the nightstand once again and sank against the pillows, drifting into a light slumber.

* * *

><p>AN: Thanks so much for the kind reviews and the story alerts! The other members of New Directions will definitely be making their appearance soon! Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	5. Chapter 5

Tina was frazzled. She knew exactly why she was frazzled, but she refused to admit to it so instead, when she walked into morning conference 15 minutes late and then forgot three patients on her morning rounds, she blamed it on the lack of sleep and the fact that she had overslept (finally falling asleep at 4:30 and sleeping right through her 5:45 alarm) and the fact that she didn't get a chance to have her customary cup of morning coffee. Or two. Or three. She snapped at the medical student when he asked her why she was using a fluoroquinolone antibiotic instead of amoxicillin, banishing him to the library to read on "the simple basic principles of antibiotics, since you clearly failed that part of medical school," and she had successfully scared away all of the nurses, leaving only brave Millie to come over to her and inform her of patients who needed her attention.

She had stuffed her cellphone deep in the bottom of her bag, and buried the purse at the very bottom of her locker, under her trench coat, discarded yoga pants, sneakers, and NYU sweatshirt, hoping that the physical barriers would keep her from the text message alert that had greeted her when she opened her eyes. Between the yelping that she had done when her eyes connected with the red "6:10" on the alarm clock and hiccup she felt in her throat when she saw the alert message on her phone that said "Text message from Artie Abrams" – Tina was having one of those sideways mornings.

It wasn't that getting a message from Artie was a bad thing. In fact, she felt stupid for having reacted to it at all. Once upon a time, she got text messages from him almost every hour, and she thought nothing of seeing his name pop up on the screen. So why was this particular message haunting her? She hadn't had the guts to open it yet – that was a task that definitely needed to happen _after_ several cups of coffee – but she could almost hear the phone taunting her from underneath all those layers in her locker, tempting her to find out just what he wanted. With her luck, he was probably just sending a customary "it was good to catch up, see you in another ten years" message but somehow, somewhere in her subconscious, Tina hoped – no, she knew, she just _knew_, that she wasn't the only one who had felt the stirrings of something coming back between them last night.

Glancing down at her watch, Tina shuffled slowly over to the physician's locker room gulping down her venti-sized triple latte on her way there. She had private clinic scheduled for the rest of the day, which meant that she was seeing patients in her normal office instead of the working in the emergency room. The good news was that Rachel was one of her first patients for the day, and Tina was always happy to catch up with her old friend. The bad news was that Rachel was too good of a friend to fall for Tina's "everything is totally normal" face. Pulling open her locker and grabbing her purse out from under the barricades she had set up, Tina dug out her phone and glanced at the alert again. Text message from Artie Abrams. With anxiously bated breath, she pressed "open" and waited for his message to pop up.

Can I take you out to dinner tonight?

The corners of her mouth turned upwards ever so slightly. He apparently wanted to reconnect as badly as she did.

"Of course," she typed quickly, "where do you want to go?"

Hitting send, the smile that graced Tina's face was just a little bit wider than she had planned on it being.

/**/

The smile was still on Tina's face when she walked in to exam room 5, despite her attempts to neutralize her expression.

"Rachel!" she greeted the bubbly brunette happily, "I'm so glad to see you!"

Rachel studied her friend carefully. There was something different about her; something just a little bit off. She had known Tina since they were 15, and had even lived with her for four years of college. She could read Tina's facial expressions in her sleep and this one seemed to be a combination of several – she had on her "I'm a professional and a doctor" façade, which usually meant that she was trying to hide something. Studying her further, Rachel also noticed a bit of "I have a secret I don't want to tell you but I will if you probe hard enough" and a hint of…giddiness? She hadn't seen Tina giddy about anything since they switched over to a new electronic testing system in the emergency room and even then, that was a nerdy sort of giddiness. This was an excited sort of giddy. Rachel was definitely curious now.

"How are you feeling? Any more neck pain?" Tina asked, walking over to the computer to pull up Rachel's latest MRI scans and the radiologist's report.

_So she wants to be professional_, Rachel thought, _that's fine. We can do the professional stuff first – I'll humor her on this one._

"Nope – no pain at all. The numbness in my fingers is all gone too which is great!" Rachel gushed. She had fallen down a few stairs coming off stage one night, injuring one of the discs in the cervical spine in her neck and pinching a nerve. The injury had thrown her out of commission for more than three months while she languished in a neck brace and received steroid injections in the back of her neck to help the injury heal. She was itching to get back to performing, and was just waiting for Tina to check her and give her the all clear.

"Well," Tina started, "it looks like this latest set of MRIs show that you're pretty much all healed up. The disc looks great, the neurologist doesn't have any concerns about the pinched nerve. As long as you don't have any pain or any other symptoms, it looks like you're all ready to get back to your show."

"Great," Rachel said matter-of-factly. "Now tell me what you're so preoccupied with. I know there's somethng going on."

Tina closed her mouth quickly, not wanting to let on that her jaw was about to drop. Rachel could read her a little too well for comfort, and she wasn't sure that she was ready to talk about any of it just yet.

"Artie is in New York," tumbled out of her mouth. She wanted to mentally slap herself across the forehead for her inability to lie to Rachel.

"Oh my god!" Rachel exclaimed, "we haven't seen Artie in _ so long_! What's he doing here? What has he been up to? How did you find out? When was the last time we heard from him? It must have been like sophomore year of college!" Rachel gushed, asking and answering her own questions all at the same time.

Tina sat quietly and waited for Rachel to finish. After all, she had had almost all night to wrap her mind around the fact that Artie was back in her life, but Rachel had had all of ten seconds to process the news.

"Wait, why are you not more excited? You were practically giddy thirty seconds ago," Rachel asked, confused at Tina's almost one hundred and eighty degree turn in demeanor.

"I was _not_ giddy!" Tina insisted, "Rachel Berry, what are you talking about?"

Rolling her eyes, Rachel ignored Tina's comment and settled on examining her friend. Her face was just a touch flushed and she was twirling a strand of her long dark hair nervously. As she twirled the hair, she chewed on her bottom lip, pretending to preoccupy herself with Rachel's chart on the computer monitor.

"Wait," Rachel started, her mind clicking as to what was really going on, "did something happen with you and Artie? Not back in college – but recently? Did you know he was coming to New York?"

"No, I had no idea," Tina answered honestly, "he walked into the ER yesterday with two broken fingers. It was like a vision from the past Rachel. He looks exactly the same – maybe better – than I remembered."

Rachel smiled at that comment. She knew that Artie and Tina had drifted apart in college. She had lived with Tina so she couldn't help but notice that the once inseparable pair seemed to move in two different directions towards the end of their sophomore year. She had never asked Tina or Artie about it, deciding it was none of her business and that she should let them sort out their complicated friendship on their own, but that hadn't stopped her from joining in with Tina and Mercedes to secretly analyze Artie's girlfriends or to ponder with Mercedes and Kurt as to what exactly happened to Artie and Tina. She knew that Tina still to this day, whether she admitted it or not, compared many of the guys she dated to Artie, rejecting them because they simply didn't "get" her the way that he once had in high school.

"Sooo," she prodded, "what was he like? What did you guys talk about?"

"Not much – we mostly caught up on life. He's working out in LA now, as a music producer. He's been out there ever since he graduated from college. And uh, he's not seeing Hannah anymore."

Rachel raised her eyebrows at the mention of horsemouth – er, Hannah. She hadn't heard anyone mention the girl since Kurt had accidentally told Artie of their "fond" nickname for his girlfriend and she certainly hadn't expected Tina to bring her up now.

"We're, uh, we're grabbing dinner tonight," Tina finished, finally looking up from the computer screen to meet Rachel's eyes. The smile that she tried to hide on her face when she said that gave Rachel all the answers she needed – Tina Cohen-Chang had her best friend back, and she was ecstatic.

"This is so exciting!" Rachel squealed, "I'm _so_ glad you guys are reconnecting. You were always so cute together," she teased.

"What? No," Tina quickly jumped to the defensive, "we're just getting dinner as friends."

"I never said it was anything more than friendly," Rachel continued teasing, "I just said you guys were cute."

Tina shook her head as she laughed softly to herself. Leave it to Rachel to start setting her up with Artie again thirty seconds after she found out that he was in town.

Rachel walked out of the office with insistances that Tina call her _as soon as_ dinner was over tonight so that they could catch up on everything that happened. The wink that she threw over her shoulder as she left made Tina just the tinest bit suspicious, but her suspicions were really raised when her receptionist told her that not one but two of her friends had called requesting appointments for later that afternoon, for some sort of mysterious "food poisoning" that they had both caught and needed to be seen _immediately_.

/\

Tina gave Mercedes a quick once over as she walked into the exam room for her second to last appointment of the day. She looked fairly comfortable sitting there, and didn't seem to be having any signs of what she had desecribed as "god awful, I'm about to die, food poisoning.

"Mercedes Jones," Tina greeted, "what the hell did you all eat to get food poisoning?"

"Uh, we had, uh, sushi. From this cheap place. Out in Brooklyn. It was sketchy," Mercedes replied, trying to come up with a plausible explanation in her head. When Rachel had called her that morning positively beaming over the phone with the news that Artie was back in town and that Tina had a kind of _date_ with him later that night, she knew she needed to talk to her friend right away.

Tina eyed her friend suspiciously. She couldn't be positive that Mercedes was being one hundred percent truthful, especially given the fact that she had so hastily made her appointment not even five minutes after Rachel left the office and only 30 seconds before Kurt called to schedule his appointment. But then again, Mercedes and Kurt did seem to like finding these hole-in-the-wall eateries that she swore would one day get their stomachs in trouble.

Pushing Mercedes down on the exam table, Tina pressed down gently on her stomach.

"Any vomiting? Nausea?" she asked, moving her hands slightly and pressing down again, "does this hurt?"

"No," Mercedes said, "so what are you doing tonight Tina?"

Tina narrowed her eyes and studied Mercedes curiously. Choosing not to play along, she continued with her exam.

"When did your symptoms start Mercedes? Actually – what symptoms do you have? Why do you think it's food poisoning?"

"Uh, my stomach hurts?"

"Liar."

"Okay come on Tina, you can't announce to Rachel that Artie is back in town, Artie who I might remind you is the guy who you drunkenly told me was 'the one regret' you had in life, and not expect me to be curious," Mercedes pouted.

"And you couldn't have called as my friend to ask me about it?" Tina asked with a hint of annoyance, "you had to make an appointment and concoct some story about food poisoning?"

"This way you're ethically bound to stay in this room and check me out and make sure I'm not going to die from the sushi," Mercedes grinned, "so come on woman, check out my food poisoning and we'll chat."

"This was not part of the hippocratic oath," Tina groaned as she started filling in information in Mercedes' chart.

"Why is he in New York?"

"I'm sure Rachel told you that he's a music producer out in LA," Tina sighed. "He said he's meeting with a couple of record companies here about some new acts, and trying to set up some other business contacts out here."

"How long is he here for?" Mercedes asked.

"Until next Wednesday," Tina replied, mentally counting out the number of days that Artie would be in the city.

"And he's not seeing anyone?"

"Would you stop?" Tina pleaded, "he's my best friend. Or at least he used to be. We're catching up – it's been like twelve years. Let me just get the Artie I know back – that's all I'm hoping for."

Mercedes rolled her eyes and hopped off the exam room table. "I'm totally feeling better; Kurt is outside in the waiting room because his appointment is right after mine – I'll just send him in," she said with a cheshire cat grin, "he was always better at forcing you to talk."

Tina buried her face in her hands, shaking with laughter at the audacity of her friends and the antics they pulled and also at the ridiculousness that her day had dissolved into. She was still in that position when Kurt announced his presence in the room with a rapid clearing of his throat. Tina looked up as he jumped gracefully onto the exam table, placing his exquisitely fashionable briefcase beside him.

"I ate sushi, I got sick. You know, throwing up, stomach ache, fever, itchy eyes – whatever the symptoms of food poisoning are," he announced. He pushed the bangs of his perfectly styled hair up slightly out of his face, crossed his legs expertly and fixed Tina with his best inquisitive stare.

"What could you possibly want to know?" Tina asked, "I'm sure Rachel and Mercedes already know all there is to know."

"Nothing," Kurt said. "because unlike you girls, I did keep in touch with Artie occassionally. We exchange holiday cards so I've always had an idea of what he's been up to."

"I didn't know that," Tina said curiously, looking up to meet Kurt's eyes.

"You wouldn't," Kurt replied, "because those hospital clogs you have on are an insult to mankind and dangerous to my eyes. It's the universe punishing you for your horrific choice in footwear."

Tina rolled her eyes. Kurt worked as the fashion director of a prominent magazine in the city, and as such, he was dealt the job of shopping not only for his own wardrobe, but also for Rachel, Mercedes, and Tina. And because of that, it irked him to no end when Tina paired her oldest pair of worn-in hospital clogs with his "fashion masterpieces."

Tina sighed. "We're just going out to dinner to catch up, see if we can't learn to be friends again."

"You were always friends," Kurt said as he walked over to Tina and took one of her hands in his, "just like you always perked up whenever someone mentioned his name, he would ask about you too when we talked."

"Really?" Tina asked, surprised, as she lifted her eyes to meet Kurt's.

"Really," he confirmed, smiling wryly, noticing that Tina didn't deny the fact that he had just called her out on her habit of stopping whatever she was doing and listening intently whenever Artie's name was mentioned.

"Honey, just go have fun tonight. The connection is still there, you'll see," he encouraged, "and make sure you wear that Diane von Furstenberg we picked out last Saturday – you'll kill in it."

* * *

><p>AN: I'm so sorry these chapters are so long! I wanted to get the background all set up before really moving forward with Artie and Tina. This should the it in terms of background for now - Artie and Tina have dinner in the next chapter! A quick poll - how much angst do you guys want to see in this story? I kind of have two ideas in my mind in terms of the resolution - one leaving things undone for a little while and ending the story with a resolution, and the other resolving things more quickly and following Tina/Artie through slightly more fluff.

Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	6. Chapter 6

They had decided on a late dinner at Bouchon Bakery in Columbus Circle. It was one of her favorite restaurants in the city, nestled on the third floor of the Time Warner Center and overlooking Central Park. She was looking forward to it – not only to catch up with Artie, but also for the amazingly delicious peanut butter cookie that was sure to follow her meal.

She had taken Kurt's advice on the dress, pulling the new Diane von Furstenberg out of her closet and hanging it on the door as she got ready. Her hair was down and in long waves hanging loosely down her back with hints of her highlights peaking through and shimmering in the glow of her makeup lamp. She'd gone for natural with the makeup, just a swipe of eyeshadow on her lids, a dusting of blush on her cheeks, and a quick application of lipstick. Clipping in small chandelier earrings, she reached for the dress and stepped lightly into the soft chiffon fabric. Kurt had done well with the selection – the garment was the purest shade of sea blue, billowy yet skimming over all the right curves. It criss-crossed in the front, giving just a peek of her décolletage and flared out ever so slightly at the bottom, imparting to it an almost flirtatious playfulness. A small silver pendant ended just above the swell of her breasts, hinting at what lay below, and several matching bangles on her wrist jingled ever so slightly as she moved. Her favorite pair of Louboutins completed the look, complimenting the curve of her toned calf and putting her at several inches above her normal height.

Columbus Circle was only a couple of blocks away from her apartment and Tina opted to walk, enjoying the activity of the city on a Friday night – watching families stroll along with little kids and dogs in tow, and tourists hunched over fold-out maps trying to figure out which way was uptown. Walking simply for the sake of walking, and taking in the city sights, Tina was reminded of those first days in New York City, when she and Rachel or Mercedes would simply get on the subway and get off at random stops, exploring the city with only their two feet, an unlimited subway pass, and a couple of H&H bagels.

Artie had gone to the restaurant directly from his meetings downtown, not having had time to go back to his hotel room to freshen up or change. He was still dressed for work – dark suit, lightly striped shirt, and solid blue tie. He readjusted the bandage on his hand as he waited for the hostess to prepare their table, frowning at how dirty it had gotten simply by virtue of coming into contact with the wheels of his chair all day long. It wasn't easy wheeling himself around with his left hand in splints and bandages, but a little maneuvering had done the trick and he was zipping along just fine. As he waited for her to arrive, he sipped on a beer and skimmed through his email. His inbox was perpetually in a state of being behind given the sheer volume of messages that came in each day – at the moment, he needed to read over two studio contracts, preview several rough cuts of songs that had been recorded that day, and sign a ridiculous number of administrative forms that his assistant had passed along. He had cancelled a dinner with a music distributor and drinks with several studio musicians because of his plans with Tina, and he knew that those conversations needed to be made up at some point as well. There was a long night of work ahead of him, and Artie sighed, rubbing his eyes as he faced another sleepless night.

Tina chose that moment to make her appearance, looking stunning in the warm light of the restaurant. She greeted him with a chase kiss on the cheek, her fingers lingering on his face ever so slightly as he ran his hand along her back gently pulling her into a hug. He smiled as she pulled back softly, holding her gaze and enjoying the closeness of their faces, the proximity of her body as she leaned down over his wheelchair, and the utterly intoxicating scent of her perfume. When she finally stood and made her way over to her chair, Artie put away his cellphone, silencing it as he slipped it into his pocket, not wanting any disruptions during dinner.

"You look beautiful," he couldn't help saying, watching her blush slightly at his compliment.

"You clean up pretty well yourself," Tina replied, hoping to lighten the mood just slightly. Sitting before her in his suit and tie with a confident smirk on his face, Artie looked every inch the man that she knew he would one day become. Bold, successful, and handsome beyond expectation. She had a hard time controlling her awe and pinched her thigh tightly under the table, silently reminding herself that this was just Artie – her best friend, the guy who'd seen her in pajamas and dirty hair and the guy who'd helped her clean off slushies in the bathroom.

"Busy day?" Artie asked, reaching over to pour Tina a glass of water from the small carafe sitting in the middle of the table.

"Not too bad," she replied, pulling a piece of bread from the basket and smothering it with butter. Taking a bite, she looked across the table to see Artie grinning at her. "What," she asked, wiping at the corners of her mouth, "do I have crumbs?"

"No," he chuckled shaking his hand, "it's just that move you just did right there – the drowning your bread in butter thing – that's such a classic Tina move." He reached for the breadbasket himself, mimicking her earlier actions and stuffing the chunk into his mouth.

Tina giggled. It was so natural sitting here and having dinner with him, listening to him tease her about her love for the bread basket or pouring water for her from across the table.

"So what'd you do today?" she asked as she took another bite.

"A lot of meetings, met with a couple of talent agents who wanted me to listen to some stuff. Had lunch with two of the songwriters I work with who are based here in the city – this one new song that they wrote – god, you'd love it. It's the most amazing mix of ballad and soul."

Tina listened with rapt attention. Artie seemed so happy talking about his work and the sparkle on his face as he reminisced about the song he had heard at lunch was bright enough to illuminate the night sky. It was clear that he loved what he did, and his success was magnified by his devotion to the job.

"Is that the gist of what you do as a music producer?" she asked, curious as to what his job entailed.

"Kind of," Artie explained, "I've been focusing on discovering some newer acts lately so my time has been split between meeting with talent agents, listening to demo tapes, listening to songs from composers, and doing a little bit of recording in the studio. It's a fun mix."

"Oh really? Anyone I might know?" Tina asked.

"Um, well, have you heard about the new band Shaker Street?" Artie replied.

"I have!" Tina reacted enthusiastically, "their new song is unbelievable!"

Artie merely smiled and nodded his head in assent.

"Wait" she said incredulously after a second, "you did _not_ produce their album."

"Yeah, I might have had a hand in that," Artie chuckled sheepishly.

"How big of a hand?" Tina countered, suspicious as to just how successful Artie was and wondering how she had managed to go so long without hearing about him in some way or other.

"I may have produced most of the songs on that album," he answered, watching her jaw drop in shock as she stared at him from across the table. He was proud of his accomplishments, and as Ari had mentioned earlier, he was exceptionally proud of the fact that the songs he produced were selling so well – but there was something about Tina's reaction, her awe at hearing about his work and her excitement at his success that made him just a teeny bit prouder of his work.

"Wow," Tina said when she finally recovered from her shock, "that's incredible."

"Well, I'm not the only one," he insisted, "look at you – a doctor working in a major New York city hospital – you're doing something that's really spectacular too."

Tina smiled, looking down at the napkin in her lap before raising her eyes to meet Artie's again. "I love it," she finally said, "it's like I've finally found the one thing that really makes me happy, and I could do it forever and never get enough."

"And you're wonderful at it," Artie complimented, his warm gaze matching her happiness.

They passed the rest of the meal peppering each other with questions about their careers and by extension, their respective lives. Artie was particularly curious as to what drew Tina to medicine, and was pleased to find out that it had truly been her professors in college who had influenced her, and that her decision to go to medical school hadn't been one to appease her parents. For her part, Tina tried to avoid sounding like a giddy school girl as she asked him about the artists he worked with and the musicians he counted among his friends. She was having a hard time wrapping her mind around the fact that Artie was so connected in the music industry but she also couldn't contain her excitement when he regaled her with tales of recording sessions and music negotiations and CD sales.

As the meal wound down and the waitress returned to collect their now empty plates, the conversation delved deeper into the past, back towards one of the last times they had truly spent time together as best friends. It was probably the end of spring break their sophomore year of college –Tina and Artie had both chosen to spend the vacation back home in Lima, but despite their overlapping time off, they had barely seen each other. She had been busy entertaining relatives visiting from Texas and had barely had a moment to herself, and Artie had passed most of the break playing video games with Puck and Finn. On the last day before going back to school, Artie had invited Tina over to his house to hang out and they'd passed the afternoon comfortably out in his backyard, listening to music on his iPod while laying on the grass and flicking pieces of dandelions at each other. As their time together was coming to a close, Artie had looked like he wanted to say something to her but she kept avoiding his attempts, choosing instead to change the conversation to lighter topics and fiddling with her phone. It was only when she excused herself to take a phone call that Artie allowed himself to face what was really going on – he'd seen the caller ID display and knew the call was from Lucas, the boy from the party that night and the boy who Tina had very recently started dating. He knew that Tina was infatuated with the new relationship and was trying to tone down her giddiness around him because for some reason, the pair had made it an unwritten rule not to talk about their love lives. Tina returned from her conversation with Lucas to hear him saying his goodbyes to Hannah. He thought that he'd seen something flash through Tina's eyes when she heard him tell Hannah that he missed her, and would see her as soon as he was back on campus.

As the waitress returned with their peanut butter cookie and ice cream, Tina took a deep breath.

"So what really happened with you and Hannah?" she asked nervously.

Artie studied her as she asked the question. She looked shy, and almost as if she were afraid of what the answer might be. Reaching over to take a spoonful of cookie and ice cream, Artie swallowed quickly before replying.

"What happened with you and Lucas?"

Tina startled. She hadn't expected him to answer her question with one of his own, and she thought about forcing him to answer first since she'd obviously asked her question first – but there was something in his expression that stopped her.

"It was just one of those college romances," she sighed, "we worked back then because we didn't have responsibilities or real world problems. It was all about living in the moment. But eventually, we just had less and less in common with each other – we wanted different things out of life and neither of us were willing to give anything up to be with the other person."

Tina took a deep breath before continuing.

"And he always wondered how I could be best friends with you," Tina finally said, "he said he didn't understand how a guy and a girl could be best friends. Said that that just didn't work."

Artie nodded. Somehow, he'd expected as such when he'd asked Tina about the circumstances of her relationship and breakup with Lucas. Holding her gaze, he thought carefully before answering the question she had posed for him.

"It was kind of the same thing with Hannah," he began, still holding eye contact, "she said that she liked me and I thought that she was smart and funny. But the longer we dated, the more she'd bring you up and ask about our relationship, and she never believed me when I assured her that you were just my best friend."

Artie, too, sighed before continuing.

"When we broke up, she told me that I wouldn't be able to truly give myself to another girl until I got over loving you," he finally said, watching as Tina's mouth formed a small "oh" in surprise.

Artie recovered first. Pushing the plate of dessert towards Tina, he smiled kindly and said with a forced brightness in his voice, "well, that's all in the past now, isn't it? We were all kind of naïve and relationship-challenged in college."

Tina smiled and reached for the cookie, adjusting her voice so that it matched the lightness of Artie's tone. "Of course – and suspicions were like a cardinal rule in college relationships," she said, "besides, we were always best friends – they had nothing to worry about."

They relaxed as the conversation moved back into the safer friends zone. Now that they had moved beyond the topic of past loves and the possibility of them being anything more than simply best friends, they could relax and enjoy the rest of their dinner and catch-up session. Artie was surprised at the stab of disappointment that he had felt when Tina said they were nothing more than best friends, but he pushed the feeling aside, writing it off as simply a reemergence of past emotions – which was understandable given the amount of reminiscing the pair had done. Tina too avoided thinking about Artie's revelation that Hannah had accused him of being in love with her, and instead focused on planning a life that now included Artie back in his role as her best friend.

Just as Artie finished signing and paying the bill, the comfortable silence the pair had lapsed into was broken by the shrill ring of Tina's pager. She reached for it apologetically, reading the message quickly before gathering her purse from the back of the chair. Turning back to Artie, she met his eyes regretfully, explaining, "I'm so sorry, but I have to go – one of my patients just got transferred to the intensive care unit."

"It's not a problem," Artie replied pushing back from the table and following her out to the door of the restaurant, "I'm so glad we had a chance to catch up tonight."

Tina turned to him, slinging her purse over her shoulder before leaning down to give him a long hug. She rested her head gingerly in the crook of his neck and she ran her hands ever so lightly through the hair at the back of his neck. Pressing a soft goodbye kiss to his cheek, she unwrapped herself from his embrace and took a step back.

"When do you go back to LA?" she asked.

"Wednesday morning," he replied. A beat passed before Artie continued – "I'll give you a call and hopefully we can find a time to get together again before I leave?"

"I'd love to," Tina replied quickly. She reached down to grab his hand once more and threading her fingers through his, squeezed his hand gently before turning around to go back to the hospital. As she looked over her shoulder one last time, Artie waved slightly before turning his chair in the direction of the taxi line to go back to his hotel and face the mountain of work awaiting him.

Tina dialed the number for the intensive care nurse as she walked down the street. As she listened to the nurse read off the patient's vitals to her over the phone, she mentally ran through the list of things that she'd need to do once she got to the hospital. And in the back of her mind, creeping steadily towards the surface, was the realization that in her life right now, with her busy schedule and on-call shifts, endless patients and constant pages – there was simply no place to fit in a boyfriend.

* * *

><p>AN: Thanks for the reviews! Slightly angsty as Tina and Artie learn how to be a part of one another's lives once again, and Artie goes back to LA soon! I may up the rating of this story slightly, as some of the upcoming chapters may require a higher rating. Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	7. Chapter 7

Tina ended up working a double shift over the weekend, covering for one of the other ER doctors whose daughter had come down with bronchitis. Although she and Artie had kept a string of texts going, there was no mention of getting together again until Monday morning when Tina was awakened from her post-call nap by the shrill ring of her cellphone. She groggily answered the offending device without looking at the caller ID and was greeted by Artie's cheerful voice on the other end.

"Hey Tee," he started, "I know it's kind of last minute but I was wondering if you wanted to grab dinner tomorrow night. I fly out Wednesday morning and I wanted to catch you before I left."

"Mhmm," Tina yawned, stretching slightly as she tried to wake up her brain, "I'm working tomorrow night so I won't be off until midnight. Are you free today?"

Artie frowned. He had back-to-back meetings scheduled for the rest of the day and as he mentally ran through his schedule, it was pretty clear that he couldn't blow off any of them. "No, unfortunately not," he sighed. "I don't mind meeting you after your shift though - if you're not too tired," he added quickly.

Tina cringed slightly; with all the shifts she'd worked recently and the sleepless nights, she knew that she'd be close to dead on her feet at the end of her shift tomorrow. But she wanted to see Artie and with their busy schedules, if midnight was the only time that they could get together, then midnight it would have to be. "That sounds good – do you mind meeting me at the hospital then?"

"Yup – I'll see you there. Bye Tee." Artie hung up with a grin.

Tina spent the rest of the day running errands and cleaning her apartment. Just after one o'clock, she stopped by the local organic Thai restaurant and ordered two lunch specials to go – sesame friend tofu with broccoli over quinoa. Her stomach growled as the enticing smells of the takeout container reached her nose and she quickened her pace, dashing into the luxury apartment building and smiling at the doorman before making her way upstairs. She took the familiar route to apartment 1706, rapping on the door impatiently as she waited for Rachel to appear.

"Lady, open up," she called out through the closed door, "I've got food."

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" she heard from inside as running footsteps came closer and the door was thrown open by an out of breath Rachel. "I was doing yoga," she explained, opening the door further and allowing Tina to enter into the foyer.

Before Tina could even put the food down on the dining table, Rachel started with the questions. "So, how was your dinner with Artie? Did you wear the new dress? Did he love it? What happened? How is he? Were there sparks? Are you going to see him again? Can we get together with him?" When Rachel stopped to take a breath, Tina opened her box of take out and grabbed a piece of tofu, stuffing it into the petite woman's mouth. Rachel's muffled protests were drowned out by Tina's giggles, and her friend chewed angrily as Tina laughed.

"Slow down Rach," Tina said, "it was just dinner. We caught up, he told me about his job, we talked about college and med school – it was a really nice meal. I had a good time."

Rachel swallowed finally, and sighed as she took in Tina's faraway expression.

"But were there sparks?" she asked in a quiet voice.

"There will always be sparks," Tina whispered, "but there can never be the same kind of sparks we had back in high school. He's different – we've both changed," she finished wistfully.

Rachel knew Tina well enough to know when to push it, and she could tell that though the conversation wasn't finished, Tina wasn't ready to say anything more.

"He did tell me that he produced the new Shaker Street album though," Tina added giddily.

"Shut. Up!" was Rachel's reply, "that's insane!"

Tina only nodded in agreement. If anyone could understand living a life with no time for a boyfriend, it was Rachel, and she was surprised that she didn't want to confide more in her friend. After all, Rachel was a performer in the industry and should have been able to empathize the most with what she was feeling. Perhaps it was because she herself wasn't really sure what she wanted out of this newly rekindled friendship with Artie yet, or maybe she simply wanted to keep him to herself for a little while longer, but Tina hesitated, and decided that for the moment, she just wasn't ready to share.

/**/

Artie's Tuesday wasn't dawning to be any better than his Monday had been. His schedule of things to do seemed to be multiplying exponentially, and the record label was on his back to speed up the pace with the production of his next projects. On top of that, his assistant had sent along more than six hundred pages of things for him to read and initial, and he just knew that a migraine was coming on as he watched the persistently blinking light go off on his Blackberry.

His meetings today were going just as abysmally as they had the previous day. The artists he met with were either untalented, rude, or self-absorbed and Artie shook his head in disbelief as he listened to one abomination after another. To make things worse, he'd smacked his bandaged hand on the edge of a door in his haste to leave and now the hand was throbbing and pulling his attention away from the tasks he needed to complete.

Given how the day had been shaping up, it shouldn't have been a surprise to him when the record company executive called, completely up in arms about a blow-up he had witnessed when he'd stopped by the recording studio earlier that day. Apparently, the studio musicians had gotten into a brawl – a physical brawl – in the middle of a recording session and as Artie winced at the description of what had gone down, the executive barked into the phone, "get your ass back here and _fix this!_."

He'd never seen his assistant move as fast as she did booking him a return flight to LA for later that evening, telling him that she'd take care of wrapping up loose ends for him in New York City and that he should just worry about getting back to LA as quickly as possible. He'd packed quickly, throwing his clothes into a suitcase and leaving the bag with the bellhop at the hotel before jumping into a cab headed for a familiar midtown Manhattan hospital. As much as his assistant could do, there was one loose end that he needed to wrap up himself.

As Artie wheeled himself into the emergency room, the flurry of activity bewildered him and he looked around anxiously for any glimpse of Tina. Incidentally, it was her medical student who recognized him first, running over from his perch at the nurse's station and greeting him happily.

"Can I help you?" the young man asked, rocking back and forth on his feet.

"Yeah – I need to speak with Tee, I mean, Dr. Cohen-Chang. Right away. It's kind of urgent," he replied, flashing the young doctor a smile as the student led him into an exam room.

Having watched the interactions between the pair the other night, the medical student knew better than to ask questions and simply shut the door quickly and set off on a quest of find Dr. Cohen-Chang.

By the time Tina burst into the exam room, Artie had unwrapped the Ace bandage on his hand and was examining his fingers curiously, trying to decide whether they looked better or worse than when he'd first injured them in the cab door.

"Artie, oh my god, are you okay? The student said you needed to see me right away," Tina said, slightly out of breath as she stepped over to stand in front of Artie's chair, taking his injured hand delicately in hers and giving it a once over quickly.

"Yeah, I kind of hit the hand on a doorway earlier so it kind of hurts, but Tee – I actually came to find you because I have to go back to LA in a couple of hours," Artie explained with a sad sigh, "something came up in the recording studio and they need me there. I'm so sorry."

Tina breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn't actually seriously injured, and then forced a smile onto her face as she met his eyes. In a falsely cherry voice, she replied lightly, "it's okay Artie, I understand. Things come up."

"No, it's not," Artie insisted, holding her gaze as he resisted the urge to tuck a stubborn strand of hair behind her ear, "I'm sorry."

Tina sighed, letting go of his hand and walking over to the cabinet to grab a new set of bandage dressings before returning to stand before him. Taking both of his hands in hers, she leaned down so that she was eye level with him. "Artie, I understand. How could I not? I work 20 hours a day and can barely find any time to have a life outside of the hospital. It sucks that you have to go back to LA, but it's okay."

Artie didn't force his hand to be still this time, reaching out to run his fingers ever so lightly down the side of her face before gently moving a lock of hair behind her ear. He kept his gaze on her face as his fingers hovered over her cheek, their breaths slowing in sync as he simply drank her in. This wonderful, beautiful woman who he had once had the privilege of calling his best friend. The air was charged between them as the tension seemed to mount in the small exam room. Artie wondered what it would be like to simply lean forward and brush his lips against hers – would it be the same as the first time she had done it back when they were sixteen? Or would it be different somehow, like the other facets of their lives that had changed. He leaned inwards ever to slightly, letting a quiet whisper escape from his lips "Tee-"

Tina took a shuddering breath. She'd seen the barrage of emotions rush by in his eyes as he'd brushed her hair out of her face, and she'd felt the almost palpable thrill of his gaze slipping down to breeze over her lips before returning to her deep chocolate eyes. As she felt his fingertips run gently down the side of her cheek, she suppressed the urge to close her eyes and lean into his touch. It couldn't happen. Not like this. "Artie," she breathed quietly, "we agreed – you're my best friend," she forced out in a raspy, strained sort of whisper.

Artie sighed. The spell was broken and he leaned back in his chair, returning both of his hands to his lap. He kept his eyes on the floor as she finished preparing the supplies to re-bandage his hand, not daring to look in her eyes just yet. He wasn't sure what he'd see in them, but he knew that if there was even a hint of desire in her eyes, he'd have a hard time respecting her wish to simply be friends. As Tina quietly rewrapped his fingers with the fresh Ace bandage, he watched her hands glide across his wrist, wishing and imagining what it might have been like to feel those nimble fingers elsewhere.

When she was all finished, and had disposed of the remaining plastic and used bandage in the appropriate trash receptacles, Tina returned to her position in front of Artie's chair and he finally raised his eyes to meet hers. "I have to go," he whispered, feeling like somehow they couldn't quite handle full volume voices at the moment.

Tina only nodded, and then, in a practiced move that could only be described as instinct, he reached out towards her hand and tugged ever so slightly as she wound herself around him, slipping into his lap in the chair and burrowing her face into his collar. He squeezed her tightly as they tried to crush their bodies as closely as possible; the stethoscope hanging around her neck dug into his chest and he could feel the barest hint of wetness on his neck. He pulled her even closer, leaning down to bury his nose in her hair and breathing in the uniquely Tina mix of coffee, hospital, and what he'd describe as the most sensual perfume known to man. When she finally pulled back, her eyes glistened with unshed tears and he leaned forward, pressing his lips gently against her forehead and pressing the barest of kisses into her hair. His steel blue eyes met her dark ones again, and he tried to convey all that they couldn't say out loud. _I know_, they said, _I feel exactly the same way_.

* * *

><p>AN: Artie is on his way back to LA, and Tina is wrestling with what she wants and what she thinks they can have. More to come soon! Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts on where you'd like this to go!


	8. Chapter 8

Artie's red eye flight from New York landed at LAX at 6am, and he collapsed wearily into the backseat of the towncar the record label had sent to pick him up from the airport. He opted to forgo the comfort of his own bed and instead directed the driver towards Melrose Blvd in Hollywood, needing to first address the mess that had pulled him back to LA. He had selfish reasons for not going home as well; right now, he needed an infusion of the vitality and activity of his work, the energy of the recording studio and the mixing booth were the lifeblood that would keep him from saying "forget it" to it all and hopping on the next plane back to New York to keep his midnight dinner plans with Tina. As the car coursed down the wide expanses of the Harbor Freeway, Artie emptied his mind and let the invigorating sounds of the latest song he was working on waft into his essence from the earbuds of his iPod.

His office was on the fifth floor of the high-rise office building that housed the music label and Artie was struck by the coolness of the atmosphere as he wheeled himself past the reception area and towards the back of the suite. His assistant sat at her desk with her head buried in a mountain of mail, her hair pulled back from her face and her forehead wrinkled in concentration as she studied the papers before her.

"Hey Susie," he greeted coming to a graceful stop in front of her desk.

Susie looked up from the stack of envelopes and files on her desk and broke into a smile. She was in her mid-thirties with dark, shiny hair that curled naturally into ringlets and a delicate, doll-like face. She looked comfortable in dark pants and a ruffled tank top, with little makeup on her face and sensible hoop earrings in her ears. She stood from behind her desk and walked over to Artie, her shoes squeaking quietly against the hardwood floors.

"Artie, it's good to have you back."

"Thanks Susie. I'm sorry it's been so crazy the past couple of days – hopefully we can get all this nonsense sorted out and get back to work."

After five years of working together, Artie and Susie were a well-matched team and could accomplish more in three hours than most people could in a whole day.

"I cancelled all of your meetings from Tuesday night and rescheduled them as phone conferences for later today and tomorrow," Susie said, "you had dinner blocked off on your schedule for midnight but I wasn't sure who that was with so I wasn't able to cancel that."

"It's fine, I took care of that one myself," Artie explained as he began wheeling himself into his office.

Susie followed him.

"Steve from Paramount called about a new music reality show that they're pitching – something about finding the worst singers in America and coaching them into superstars. He wants to hear your thoughts. Christie from PR downstairs wants you to approve some new releases that they put together to promote the single from Shaker Street. Phil got a call from Warner Brothers about using the rights to one of the Shaker Street songs in their new movie – he wants you to get back to him."

She pointed to three stacks of files and papers that she'd laid out for him on his desk.

"This stack with the neon pink post-its needs your immediate attention – they've all been reviewed by legal already and just waiting for your signature. This middle stack with the yellow post-its can wait a couple of days, and this pile here with the green stickers, I've already taken care of. Oh, and Gary the guitar player has a broken hand from the fist fight yesterday, kind of like the one you're sporting there on your left hand, so he's going to be out of commission for the next couple of weeks."

Artie frowned. Leave it to his lead guitarist to get into a bar brawl in a multi-million dollar recording studio and then break his hand, the key to his livelihood as a musician. He scrubbed his hands over his face in frustration and sighed.

"Okay, we'll deal with that when he gets here. LA is a big town, I'm sure we can find a musician to sub in for him without too much trouble. I'm going to sort through all of this – stuff – on my desk. Call the idiots from yesterday, all of them, and tell them I want to meet with everyone at around 11."

Susie nodded, closing the door to Artie's office as she made her way back to her desk.

It was clear to Artie within hours of being back in the office that there was little room in his schedule for him to even think about pursuing a personal life. After sorting through Susie's meticulously arranged piles and thoroughly reaming out the musicians who'd wrecked havoc on his plans, he settled down to meet with several songwriters and lyricists, crafting the music that would shape Shaker Street's second album. He called back Steve from Paramount, telling him what an awful idea his reality show was and refusing to have his name attached to the project, and he okayed the press release written by the Christie in the publicity department. After stopping to scarf down the turkey sandwich and Coke that Susie had dropped off for lunch, he shot off an email to five different talent scouts he knew well, asking if any of them had a rock/soul/all-over-cool guitarist who could come in and replace the stupid one with the broken hand.

There wasn't room in his life for a woman, but with one so captivating fresh on his mind, he swallowed his embarrassment and stalked Facebook for a picture of her, printing out what seemed to be a fairly recent shot of her cuddling a large Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animal in the Disney Store and sticking it into a discreet pocket in his wallet.

It was close to eleven when he finally pulled into his garage, mentally congratulating himself for having had the foresight to leave his car in the parking lot of the music label before leaving for New York last week. Rolling himself down the driveway to collect the mail that had built up in his absence, he breathed in the warm Californian night sky. It was so different here – from Lima, from New York – he'd grown up with his best friends just down the block or a couple of houses over, but here, everyone was in their own world, isolated by their own success.

He could see a warm glow coming from the kitchen and smiled, knowing that his neighbor Gloria had probably been by earlier in the day and had most likely left him a plate of her own home cooking on the table. Artie realized early on that he was pretty useless in the kitchen and despite the accessible accommodations he had had installed in the house when it was built, he still rarely ventured towards the island or past the stove, choosing instead to restrict his domain to the refrigerator and the microwave.

It was just past midnight by the time he finally made his way to bed. As he eased himself from his chair into the center of the king-sized mattress, the enormity and quietness of the house engulfed him. It was a house built for six, but occupied only by one. The loneliness was suddenly acutely evident – he'd never wished to share the home with anyone before, but at this moment, he would have given anything to be able to turn to a lover and pull her close against his chest. He cursed to himself, realizing that he'd forgotten to call Tina when he landed in LA.

Tina had worked until midnight on Tuesday and then opted to sleep in the on-call room at the hospital before rounds on Wednesday morning, not having the energy to go home after she'd said her goodbye to Artie. Wednesday had been a bit of a blur too as she methodically saw patients in her private office, feeling as if she were in a bit of a daze. She'd checked her phone a few times on Wednesday, hoping to see a text from Artie to let her know that he'd landed in LA but it never came and she pushed the disappointment of that aside, convincing herself that they were both busy, and he didn't have an obligation to tell his _best friend_ that he'd made it home safely.

By the time she made it home at just after six, she was too tired for dinner. She went through the small pile of delivery packages her mailroom had dropped off in front of her apartment door – the result of several impromptu online shopping sprees she had engaged in while bored – and tried on the new fall boots Kurt had gushed about and the new sunglasses she had absolutely salivated over. Placing the boots gently back into the box, she walked over to her closet and stacked them neatly in her shoe section. Everything about her life was so organized and so perfect – her apartment was kept in a state of impeccable cleanliness (most likely owing to the fact that she rarely spent time at home) and her closet was a small sampling of the latest designer trends. She had initially resisted indulging in such extravagant clothing for herself, but Kurt had pointed out the she had neither a husband to share her life with nor children to support at the moment, so why not pamper herself a little bit. As she listened to the humming of the refrigerator in her spotless kitchen, she walked through her empty condo towards the whirlpool bathtub in the master bath. For more than an hour, she drowned her sorrows in a warm bubble bath and a single glass of white wine before wrapping herself in a thick terrycloth robe and falling into bed, succumbing to a restless sleep.

Artie debated whether it was proper to call her. It was past midnight which meant it was three in the morning in New York – hardly a proper hour for casual conversations. He scrolled up and down the screen filled with her phone number on his phone, finally giving in to temptation and hitting "call." Before he could prepare himself, her voice filled his ear, soft, raspy, and slightly choked, much like their goodbye had been thirty-something hours ago.

"Hi," she said – that one, lonely syllable. Her simple declaration tugged at him as he sat alone in bed, wishing he could be near her, to smell her shampoo and trace his fingers along the curve of her body.

"Hi," he finally choked out. It was strange how she managed to have an almost hypnotic hold on his emotions from across fifty states, how he could almost feel her caressing and filling his bedroom through the invisible lines of the telephone. "I'm sorry I didn't call earlier – it's been a busy day."

"It's okay," she murmured, pulling herself up on the pillows and arranging the comforter around her body, tugging at the ties of the robe she still wore.

"Did I wake you?"

"No, I fell asleep pretty early so I was waking up anyway when you called."

There was silence across the connection as they both contented themselves with the soft rhythm of the other's breathing.

He finally cleared his throat, and she could hear the rustling of what sounded like bed sheets from the other end of the line. "I keep thinking, wondering, what it would be like to still have you down the street – you know? To see you climbing in through my bedroom window…" he trailed off.

"Artie, it's never going to be like that again. Not like it was in high school," she sighed.

"I know," he said quietly, sounding so dejected she could almost picture him frowning with his sad puppy-eyed expression.

"We agreed – remember? You're my best friend and no one else ever had anything to worry about. You'll always be my best friend."

"Yeah," he cleared his throat again, "we agreed." He wondered if that conversation would haunt him forever, whether he'd always regret not correcting her when she'd said that Hannah and Lucas had never had anything to worry about. He wondered if he knew then that she'd take his response as a sign that he'd only want to stay best friends, that he somehow didn't fantasize about something more.

There was yet more silence, as unfulfilled wishes crawled by before them.

"I should try and get back to sleep," she finally said.

"Yeah…" he said, "sleep well. I miss you Tina."

"I miss you too Artie."

A beat passed.

"When can I take the bandage off my hand?"

Tina smiled, and closed her eyes, leaning back to rest her head against the headboard and cradling the phone along her neck. She felt a tear on her lashes. "In a week or so, follow up with your primary doctor. He'll probably want to get rid of the Ace bandage and just tape the finger with the splint."

"Okay."

"Good night Tina."

"Good night."

When she heard the call disconnect on the other end, she remained in the same position, her head leaned back, arms wrapped tightly across her chest, eyes heavy with unshed tears, and still wrapped in her warm bathrobe. She was aware of her nakedness under the soft terrycloth, and of her body's desire for him, wishing she'd allowed herself to be kissed by him when he'd looked at her like she was the most desirable woman on Earth before he left her ER, her city, and her life.

* * *

><p>AN: Don't worry! The angst will resolve itself - just hang in there with our two main characters just a little while longer and I promise they'll be in the same city again soon. Are you feeling the desire between the pair? Getting tired of the waiting yet? Want someone to hit them over the head with what's right in front of them? Let me know! Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: We span quite a few months in this chapter, so hopefully the passage of time isn't too confusing. I couldn't come up with a better way of expressing it without blatantly writing "three months later" which I don't really like doing, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it isn't too awkward.

* * *

><p>Tina took the rest of the week off of work, feeling like she needed two mental health days to herself not only to rest her body from all of the double shifts and sleepless nights it had endured in the past week, but simply to let the adrenaline, shock, confusion, and yearning work its way out of her system before she was ready to face the world again. Her department chair had been more than understanding when she'd called in sick, telling her not to worry about finding someone to cover for her and to simply rest. She so rarely took a sick day that she had nearly three months worth of vacation time saved up.<p>

By Saturday though, she was going stir-crazy in her apartment. She hadn't had a four day weekend since her second year of medical school and Tina wasn't sure what to do with all her free time. She'd gone through the usual chores – vacuuming the carpet, scrubbing down the bathroom, reorganizing her closet. She'd even rearranged the DVDs in the TV cabinet so that they were alphabetical, and ordered the spices in the kitchen cabinets by frequency of use and container size. It was still only two in the afternoon when she gave up, throwing a sweatshirt on over her tank top and yoga pants and jogging over to Kurt's, figuring the vivacious magazine editor could entertain her for the rest of the day. Kurt put her to work in his home studio, forcing her to model racks upon racks of samples that designers had sent to him in hopes of having one of their pieces make it into the magazine. They took silly pictures of her in some of the more outrageous get-ups, and stuffed themselves full of chocolate-covered blueberries and candied walnuts before collapsing in a fit of giggles on his gigantic white leather couch.

"Feel better honey?" he asked, plucking a blue feather out of her hair and tickling her on the nose with it.

"Much," was her reply. She shifted slightly, rearranging her body so that she was lying on her side, holding her head up with one propped up arm and turning to face Kurt. "Have you ever wanted something so badly, but you didn't know how it would ever work out, that it almost physically hurts?"

"I think so." They were like two little kids sharing secrets at a sleepover, illuminated by the glow of the white studio lights reflecting off the starkness of the leather sofa.

"Did it work out for you?"

"Mmhmm." He nodded to reiterate his point. "It did."

/**/

When Tina returned to work on Monday morning, she was feeling much more like her normal self again. She breezed through rounds, quizzing her medical student as she went along, emphasizing to him the key things to remember and the important treatments to know. She treated and discharged more than a dozen patients, and met with the hospital administrator about instituting a new system of checklists to prevent staff errors in the emergency room. A good friend from medical school called, wondering if she had any interest in helping to plan their ten-year reunion and she readily agreed, excited to see her classmates again and happy for the distraction of planning an event for such a large group of people.

Rachel began rehearsals for a new Broadway show and she invited Tina to come along and watch their earliest rehearsals. She was so captivated by the early performance that she gushed about the show for three days, until Millie forced her to promise to get her tickets for opening night so that she could see for herself what Tina was so obsessed with.

At the end of September, she attended the annual hospital charity gala with Kurt as her date, dressing up in a borrowed designer couture gown and making small talk all evening with various department chairs and hospital administrators.

She got promoted. The promotion itself had come as a surprise, seeing as no position had ever been advertised. But the department and the hospital board were so impressed by how efficiently the emergency room was run that they made her the associate chair of the ER and with that new position came a bigger office, a slightly larger paycheck, and many more meetings and official duties.

She called Artie every night, or he called her.

Their conversations often stretched hours at a time. She told him about the crazy patients she'd seen in the ER; he told her about the ridiculous musicians he's met with that day. She kept an eye on the department's finances and patient numbers; he watched song sales and Billboard data like a hawk. She filled him in on the going-ons of Rachel, Kurt, and Mercedes; he regaled her with tales of Finn and Puck, who he still saw regularly for guy's nights at a local bar.

She got an invitation to the annual Abrams Family Thanksgiving Extravaganza and put off answering it, wishing she could fly back to Lima for the weekend but knowing it wasn't possible with the preset ER schedule. She hadn't taken Thanksgiving off since she started practicing medicine, having no need to since her parents took their annual Caribbean cruise that weekend. It was the Tuesday before the holiday by the time she finally worked up the courage to make the call. She'd had a particularly bad day in the ER with three patients dying during her shift, one of them a four year old girl who'd been the victim of a drunk driver. Her favorite purse had gotten caught in the sliding doors of the subway on her way home, and she hadn't realized it until the strap had been rubbed clear into two pieces. And she'd gotten her hair cut by a new hairdresser, who have thinned her long locks out so much that she felt almost bald. She hoped that Mrs. Abrams would answer the phone so she could quickly decline the invitation and apologize, not sure that she'd be able to have a conversation with Artie without breaking down.

Her fears were confirmed when his soft dulcet tones answered the phone on the third ring. Whether it was the combination of an bad case of PMS or the pure madness of her day, Tina started crying, and trying to disguise her tears, she didn't answer right away.

"Hello?" he asked again, getting irritated, "who is this?"

"Ar-Ar-Artie," she hiccupped, "it's me."

His tone instantly changed and she could feel the warmth of his concern oozing through the phone. "What's wrong Pooh bear?" he asked, "what's the matter?"

Tina chuckled through her sniffles. She hadn't heard that term of endearment come out of his mouth since late in high school, and somehow, it was the exact type of soothing she needed right now. "Could you call me Pooh bear again?"

"Pooh bear," he replied, matter-of-factly. "What's wrong Tee? Is everything okay?"

She launched into the events of her day, of how helpless she'd felt watching her patients code right before her eyes on the trauma table in the ER, of how anguished the parents had been when she'd told them that their daughter didn't make it, of how she'd always remember the mother's screams in the hallway outside of her daughter's room. She told him of how everything seemed to be going wrong, how she felt like she was losing control of her life, of her doubts about her competencies as a doctor. And she concluded with how much she wished she could fly to Lima right now, to escape the harsh realities of New York City and simply have Thanksgiving dinner with his family, and to see him again.

"You could still come," was his quiet reply.

"No, Artie," she said, "you know that's not possible."

"I could come see you in New York," he offered gently.

"But what would that solve?"

"It'd feel good," he murmured truthfully.

They let that hang between them for a moment, both processing the implications of what he had just suggested. This thing that they'd been dancing around for the past couple of months. Tina was the first to recover. "Oh Artie, I called to RSVP to a Thanksgiving dinner – how did this conversation get so complicated?"

"Maybe you feel the same way," he finally said, "maybe you feel the same way that I do, and you're scared to admit it."

"We agreed Artie, we –" He interrupted her before she could finish, frustration seeping out of his pores as he tried to keep his voice in check, not wanting to upset her over the phone. "No, we agreed that there wasn't anything going on with us back in college," he said in a forced, measured tone, "we never agreed that there'd never be anything. Do you feel the same way about me that you know I feel about you? I'd like to hear you say it if you do."

"Artie, I –" she sniffled, succumbing to her tears once again and unable to finish her sentence. Artie sighed. He was reasonably sure that the feelings he'd tried to suppress about her, the longing, the aching, the self-denial that there was anything going on between them, was reciprocated on her part. But if she wasn't ready to admit to it, then he wasn't going to force her.

"It's okay Pooh bear," he reassured, "it's okay."

"Then why do I feel like a horrible person?" she whimpered through the tears, "you're angry."

Artie wasn't sure what he needed to say to get through to her. She was getting upset, and there wasn't much that he could do about it. "It's alright Tee," he reassured once again, "I'm not upset. We'll miss you at Thanksgiving."

"Happy Thanksgiving Artie," Tina whispered as she ended the call. She brushed away the tears that had collected on her cheeks and leaned her head back against the wall, realizing that once again, she'd ended a conversation with Artie Abrams in tears.

/**/

They had a hard time catching each other after Thanksgiving. Tina was working extra-long hours given the pre-holiday rush of illnesses and injuries that seemed to inundate her ER with patients, and Artie was on an extended swing through Europe, meeting with various clients and music reps there. He still sent a good night text every night, timing the message to come in right before she climbed into bed and she marveled at his ability to remember what time it was in New York no matter where he was in Europe, She smiled widely at one text in particular – a quick one-liner telling her that he'd be swinging through New York on his way back to LA.

She wasn't expecting him to land in the city for two more days, so when Rachel proposed a movie night at her place with Kurt and Mercedes, Tina jumped at the chance to spend the evening with her old friends, munching on frozen, microwavable appetizers from Trader Joe's and watching cheesy romantic comedies, just like they had done in the early days of college. Rachel's rule was always that cell phones had to be silenced and left in a basket by the door; she was a stickler about not having anything ruin their bonding time.

Tina kept her pager with her even though, just in case something came up.

The message came through halfway through the second movie, jolting everyone out of the junk-food and sugary comedy stupor they'd slipped into.

"911. Call ER. – Millie."

Tina frowned. It wasn't like Millie to simply 911 page her without telling her what was going on – she usually included at least the patient's name or the bed number. Excusing herself to answer the page with a dirty look from Rachel and an eye roll from Mercedes, Tina walked over the Rachel's kitchen phone and quickly punched in the number for the ER and waited for Millie to pick up the phone.

"Dr. Cohen-Chang here, you paged me?"

"Doctor – I wouldn't normally do this but your friend called looking for you. The guy in the wheelchair with the broken fingers? He said that he really needed to talk to you - that it was an emergency. Is your cell phone off?"

"Shit," was her only reply as she walked over to the foyer, digging through the basket to locate her cell phone. "Did he say what was wrong?"

"Just that he needed to speak to you right away, that it was an emergency."

"Thanks Millie," Tina said, hanging up and clicking on her cell phone. 38 missed calls. 1 new voicemail. Tina cursed under her breath as she opened her voicemail, knowing that something had to be seriously wrong for Artie to have reacted this way. As his voice filled her head from through the phone, the color drained from her face.

"Tee? It's Artie – there was, there was an accident. My mom, she was in a car accident. They said she had a heart attack. Tee – I don't know what's going on, but – god, I need you Tee. Call me back please."

* * *

><p>AN: So there's a little bit of fluff. Kind of. Okay, maybe I lied. But they're at least moving in the right direction! Don't be too upset about the ending - Tina is a doctor so I _had_ to somehow make use of her talents. I promise it'll all work out. Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	10. Chapter 10

A/N: A short update for you guys - I'm going to be busy tomorrow and Wednesday so I won't get a chance to update but I didn't want to leave you hanging! Hope you like this installment of Artie and Tina - please read and review!

* * *

><p>Artie's anguished voice played on repeat in her head as Tina sat in the middle of Rachel's living room trying simultaneously to get in touch with Artie, find someone to cover her hospital shifts, and make arrangements on the next flight out of New York. She wasn't surprised that she couldn't get in touch with Artie – he was probably on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic rushing back to Lima to be at his mother's side – but that didn't stop her from worrying about what he must have been feeling at that moment. Rachel, Mercedes and Kurt watched her anxiously as she left Artie a voicemail, telling him that she was on her way. Their worried expressions didn't do much to calm her anxiety.<p>

It was Mercedes who finally took control, directing Kurt towards Tina's apartment to pack her a bag, giving Rachel the task of making Tina's travel arrangements, and taking it upon herself to call Tina's ER to find someone to cover for her. Grateful for the help, Tina dialed the number for Lima General Hospital, hoping to glean some information on Mrs. Abrams' condition.

"You're booked on United Airlines flight 866 to Cleveland," Rachel announced, reading off the sheet of paper where she'd hurriedly scribbled the confirmation information. "It leaves at 5am, so – in a little more than five hours – and you'll be there by 7:30. I've also arranged for a car service to pick you up at the airport and take you straight to the hospital. I assume you'll be using your parents' cars while you're there?"

"Yeah, they're in Bermuda so it shouldn't be a problem," Tina answered distractedly. She'd gotten no information from the hospital, as expected, given the privacy regulations in place but she was still disappointed by the lack of updates. Turning to Rachel, she flashed a small smile of thanks and took the sheet of paper from her friend's hand, slipping it into her purse.

"You're all taken care of at the hospital for the next couple of days," Mercedes said, walking back into the living room, "Millie said she'd fill Dr. Strock in on the situation and they'll all help cover your ER shifts and your private practice.

"Thanks," Tina said gratefully, reaching out to pull both of her friends into a tight hug.

/**/

Artie had been in the recording studio listening to a new demo when his phone buzzed. Looking down and frowning at the name on the caller ID, he quickly lowered the volume of the music and rolled himself towards a quieter corner of the room. "Hey Dad, what's up?" It was unlike his father to call him randomly in the middle of the day.

Artie's face blanched as his father filled him in on the details of the accident. His mother had been driving home from work when her car swerved onto the sidewalk, crashing into a small tree and crushing the front section of the car. She was slumped over the steering wheel by the time the paramedics got to her, and they had shocked her in the field, bringing back a rhythm before rushing her to Lima General Hospital. The doctors were pretty sure that she had had a heart attack, causing her to black out and crash the car, and they would be doing surgery once she was stable enough for the OR.

In a daze, Artie had rushed to the airport, barely making it onto the next flight to Paris to meet his sister Arianna before the teary-eyed and distraught pair boarded their flight back to the US. While waiting to take-off from Charles de Gaulle airport, Artie called Tina, needing to hear her voice and her reassurance that everything would be okay, but kept getting her voicemail. Finally, he'd given up and simply called the ER, asking the nurse to please page her for him, and leaving that one message for her in her voicemail.

He'd never seen his father look as ashen as he did when Artie and Arianna made their into the surgical waiting room. Clutching his two children tightly to his chest, John Abrams had finally broken down and shed the tears he'd tried valiantly to keep at bay since he got the call about his wife's accident. They settled in for a long wait, with only the steady ticking of the lone clock on the wall to keep them company. Just after four in the morning, the surgical resident had come in to let them know that surgery was going well, but that they would probably be in there a couple more hours. Ari fell asleep around five, resting her head on her father's lap as she curled up on the stark leather chairs of the hospital waiting room. Artie made his way over to the small table set up along the back wall and poured two cups of coffee, adding creamer and two packets of sugar to each before rolling back to his father and handing him a cup. The elder Abrams shot his son a small grateful smile, taking a sip of the warm liquid before resting his head against the wall and closing his eyes as well.

Artie wasn't sure at what point he fell asleep, but he awoke to the sensation of a gentle hand on his forearm and someone moving the cup of coffee he still clutched in his hand. Slowly forcing open his heavy eyelids, he gazed into warm, chocolate brown eyes, illuminated by a halo of the rising sun sprinkling in from the window. He could feel the worry ebbing from his body as he drank in the love and concern on her face and tentatively reached out a hand to caress the strand of hair falling over her cheek, slipping it behind her ear before pulling her closer ever so slightly until he could lean forward and brush her lips with the barest, gentlest of kisses. Tina sank down into his lap, wrapping her arms around him and pulling him close, running her fingers slowly through his hair and along his scalp as he let out a slow, shuddering breath.

"You're here," he whispered, tightening his grip around her waist and pulling her even closer against his body, marveling at her gentle weight in his lap and convincing himself that she was actually real.

"I'm here," she echoed, pulling back softly to cup his cheek with her small hand and then leaning into him to press their foreheads together, their noses meeting softly in a tender Eskimo kiss.

"I'm glad."

She moved off his lap into the chair next to him, settling in and reaching over to clasp his hand in hers, resting their joined hands on his thigh and squeezing his fingers ever so slightly. He placed his other hand on top of hers, sandwiching her graceful fingers between his. In his peripheral vision, he saw her reach up and brush one finger against her mouth gently, tracing along where his lips had been for the briefest of encounters just seconds ago. She turned and smiled at him, a small tender smile, and he brought her hand to his lips, pressing a soft kiss against her knuckles. "Thank you for coming," he said softly.

"You needed me," she murmured in reply.


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: Sorry for the delay - here's another chapter for you guys! Hopefully, you like the Artie/Tina interaction in this one. Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!

* * *

><p>They sat there in silence, their hands tightly entwined and Tina's fingers gently stroking his in a smooth, rhythmic pattern. There were no words that needed to be spoken. The simple fact that Tina was there, sitting besides him and occasionally turning her head to make sure that he was okay was all the comfort that Artie needed.<p>

He reluctantly released her fingers from his grip when Ari woke up, letting Tina stand to hug his sister as the duo smiled at each other through tear-stained faces. He could hear Tina talking softly in Ari's ear, reassuring her that everything would be okay, and that she'd be here to help them get through it. When Ari released Tina from her embrace, his father reached in, wrapping Tina up in his arms and thanking the petite young woman for being there for them in this time of need. Artie recognized the deep bond that Tina shared with his family, despite not having seen them for more than a decade, and for the briefest moment he wondered how they had managed to lose her for so long.

They were just beginning to get caught up when the surgeon walked in, untying his surgical cap and pulling it off his head before reaching out to John Abrams and clasping him jovially on the forearm.

"Mr. Abrams – your wife made it through surgery beautifully. She had quite a bit of blockage in three of the arteries in her heart which is what we think caused the heart attack in the first place. We ended up doing what is known as a CABG procedure, where we take veins from her legs and put them in her heart to bypass those blocked arteries. Her heart responded wonderfully to that."

There was a collective sigh of relief among the occupants of the waiting room. Artie reached for Tina's hand again, squeezing it gently as she smiled down at him, the warmth of her expression sending flutters down to his toes.

"Can we see her?" Mr. Abrams asked anxiously.

"They're just moving her to the cardiac post-op ICU now and once they get her settled, you'll be able to see her. We'll probably keep her in the ICU for about 24 hours and then move her down to the general medical floor until she's ready to go home."

"Do you happen to know if she had any other injuries from the car accident? Any contusions or bleeding in the abdomen?" Tina asked, all too familiar with the potential medical complications of a car accident.

"They checked her out in the ER and it looks like she managed to get out of the car accident with only bumps and bruises," the surgeon explained, "her left wrist is potentially fractured but we won't do anything about that until she's a little more stable and the swelling in the wrist has gone down a little bit."

"Right," Tina agreed, nodding her head.

Watching Tina interact with the heart surgeon, Artie was suddenly grateful that she was a doctor and could ask all of the right questions. He hadn't managed to process much beyond the surgeon announcing that his mom had made it out of surgery okay, and hoped that Tina had absorbed more of the medical speak to repeat the explanation to him later when he was more able to process the information.

As the surgeon turned to leave, Artie reached up to pull Ari into a hug, her tears of relief dampening the collar of his shirt and his own tears of happiness stinging his eyes. Tina rubbed his back soothingly, gently massaging the tense muscles that had cramped up there. He reached behind to grab hold of one of Tina's hands, craning his neck to look into her eyes, and asked, "she's really going to be okay?"

"The scariest part of it is over," Tina assured him, glancing around to also make eye contact with Ari and his father before continuing. "The CABG procedure – or coronary artery bypass graft – is what we commonly know as a bypass surgery or in this case, your mom had a triple bypass. The success rates are magnificent and she's going to recover very nicely – in fact, they're going to have her up and sitting in a chair by about two days from now, and she'll be showering in about four days. She's going to heal very nicely."

"She wasn't even sick though, I don't understand how she could have had a heart attack randomly out of the blue," Ari asked.

"Well, the arteries in the heart can actually function quite normally even when they're 75% blocked," Tina explained, "so she could have had the cholesterol and plaque building up in the arteries without any symptoms at all. Plus, heart attacks often present very atypically in women so she may not even have realized that she was having signs of a heart attack."

Not wanting to focus on the negatives, Tina continued in a lighter, more upbeat tone, "I think it's important to remember though that she made it through surgery like a star, and she's going to get stronger and stronger each day and pretty soon she'll be back to her normal self."

The three members of the Abrams family nodded in agreement, his father wrapping an arm around his Ari and pulling her closer to his side as Artie turned to press a gentle kiss against the hand still resting on his shoulder. Tina glanced down from behind his hair and smiled, squeezing his shoulder softly in return. Truthfully, he needed that reassurance, that confirmation that she was there and real and not simply a figment of his fantastical imagination and being able to drop light kisses against her skin reiterated that for him.

A nurse arrived to guide them to Mrs. Abram's room in the post-operative intensive care unit, and Artie took few deep breaths, mentally preparing himself for what he was about to see. He hadn't had much exposure to hospitals since that fateful car accident and of course the two broken fingers that had brought him back to Tina, and he couldn't be positive that he would be able to keep hold of his emotions seeing his mother lying so vulnerably in a hospital bed. Tina sensed his hesitancy, reaching out reflexively to grab hold of the handlebars of his wheelchair and pushing him slowly down the hallway leading to his mother room. She knew it would be difficult for any son to see his mother so ill but for Artie in particular, in would also draw forth his own set of memories and fears.

Entering the room, Tina reached down to run the palms of her hands up and down Artie's arms a few times, soothing him with the gentle pressure of her hand. She kept her left hand moving along his upper arm and shoulder, and reached down to take hold of his right hand in hers, leaning over and speaking gently in his ear as he took in the sight before him. His mother was lying motionless on a stark hospital bed, several IV lines running out of her hand and forearm and a breathing tube rising from her mouth. The steady beeping of the cardiac monitors filled his head, drowning out all the reassurances from moments ago. He could only process the fact that this was his mother, lying in the ICU and looking completely unaware of the world around her, and he suddenly found it difficult to breathe, struggling for deep, wrenching breaths.

"Artie, slow breaths okay? Take a few steady breaths, in and out, in and out," Tina murmured in his ear, squeezing gently on his hand as his breathing rate gradually slowed down. "There you go," she encouraged, "she's going to be okay. As soon as she comes out of the anesthesia, they're going to take that tube out of her mouth – that's only in there temporarily. You see those IVs in her arm? They're giving her pain medication so that she's not in any pain, and they're also giving her antibiotics to prevent infection and a blood thinner to make sure she doesn't have any complications from surgery."

Artie felt slightly less fuzzy as Tina pointed out each piece of equipment in the room, explaining exactly what is function was and how it was working to help his mother get better. Even as his breathing returned to normal, she continuing running her fingers in circles along his back, the movement of her hand once again reassuring him that she was there, and she was real. As she finished talking, she leaned in to rest her forehead against the side of his face, her chin hovering just above his shoulder. He could feel the soft warmth of each breath she took against the side of his neck and he shivered slightly at their close proximity to each other. He pulled on the hand that was clutching his, encouraging her to move her body closer and she complied, taking a few steps forward and wrapping both arms around his shoulders in a slightly strained side hug and keeping her forehead against his face. As comforted as he was to her presence, he was also acutely aware that he only had to turn his head a few degrees to catch her lips in his, and he stiffened slightly as he resisted that urge, knowing that soon, there would be a more appropriate time and place for all that.

The silent quartet waited at Elizabeth Abrams' bedside for her to wake up and Tina's trained eye was the first to notice her struggling against her breathing tube. She took hold of John Abrams' hand, placing it gingerly atop his wife's, hoping the familiar contact would calm her long enough for the surgical resident to remove the breathing tube. John Abrams took Tina's cue, stroking his wife's hair gently as he held her hand and whispered in her ear.

By about six o'clock that evening, with her breathing tube removed and her husband and children by her side, Elizabeth Abrams had managed to hold a few simple conversations and keep down a small cup of ice chips. She was predictably sore and in pain from the surgery, but was otherwise doing exceptionally well. So well, in fact, that she had kicked Ari, Artie, and Tina out of her room, insisting that since only one family member could stay overnight with her in the ICU anyway, the three of them should go home and sleep. Tina had offered to stay with her to allow Mr. Abrams to sleep in his bed at home instead of the uncomfortable ICU chair, but Elizabeth had waved off that suggestion with a flap of her hand.

Artie hadn't fought his mother too much when she had insisted that they all leave. He hadn't slept in the thirty-something hours since finding out about the accident and could almost feel himself nodding off in his chair. They stumbled out of the hospital blearily, piling into the wheelchair-accessible taxi that Tina had had the foresight to call and made their way to the Abrams residence. Ari disappeared to her room almost as soon as they walked in the door, hugging both Artie and Tina before she left and thanking Tina again for being there. Artie had kissed his sister on the forehead, murmuring that he loved her as she sniffled against his shoulder. He then rolled himself towards his bedroom slowly, Tina following at his heels knowing that there was a guest bedroom across the hall from Artie's room.

When he reached his bedroom door, Artie hesitated. Tina came to a stop behind him, chewing on her lip nervously as she too contemplated how to say good night. A moment of silence passed, and then two, before he looked up to met her eyes and reached out both hands, beckoning her to come closer with his outstretched palms. She closed the gap between them, grasping his hands in hers as she stared questioningly into his silvery-blue eyes, hoping to read what was going through his mind.

Artie knew that he needed her tonight, simply to hold her against his chest and know that she was there, that he wasn't alone. As he silently pleaded his request, he could see the recognition and understanding slowly dawning in Tina's eyes and she nodded her head slowly. Following him into his bedroom, she moved familiarly into the bathroom stepping out of her shoes and socks along the way. He handed her a clean t-shirt and a pair of pajama pants through the door and he too stripped down to a t-shirt and boxers. Wheeling over to his bed, he transferred himself out of the chair and pulled back the covers, flashing back to the last time the two of them had been in this position, more than fifteen years ago.

Tina emerged from the bathroom dressed in his clothes, and shut off all the lights but one, knowing that total darkness would be too much for Artie, given the circumstances. She softly padded over to his bed and slid in, curling herself around his body as he turned to her, burying his face in the crook of her neck. Though they hadn't cuddled like this since their first foray into dating more than a decade and a half ago, they had always been tactile with each other and from her experiences that day, Tina knew that Artie derived some degree of comfort from her touch.

It was finally his turn to break down. After holding back his emotions all day and putting on a brave front for his father and for his sister, he finally let the hot tears roll down his cheeks and sobbed against her shoulder. She was the only one who he trusted to see any weakness from him, and any hint of vulnerability.

Artie's pain broke her heart, but she knew that the fear and the tension of the day were catching up to him. As he clung to her, she ran her fingers up and down his back, and crooned softly in his ear until he cried himself to sleep.


	12. Chapter 12

A/N: A great big thank you to everyone for continuing to read this story, and for all of your kind messages and reviews. They really are the best form of encouragement and have motivated me immensely to continue updating every day. I really hope you enjoy this chapter - I had a good time writing it and I hope you like where Artie and Tina have ended up on this journey back into each others lives. Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!

* * *

><p>Artie awoke to the heat of the sun streaming in through the window, grazing over the top of his bed and creating an intricate pattern of peaks and valleys in shadow and light. He could feel Tina's gentle breathing next to him and the soft thumping of her pulse against his arm. At some point in the night, they had changed positions, her head rested easily against his arm as the curve of her back fit snugly against his chest. She had hooked one leg over his, bringing his limp calf forward and sandwiching it gently between her two legs and he would have given anything in world to be able to feel the soft skin on the seductive curve of her calves against his own. His other arm was draped lazily across her stomach and he traced small patterns along her hip, taking advantage of the peek of skin where her shirt had ridden up.<p>

He couldn't pinpoint exactly when he had realized it. He thought about her constantly and he was mesmerized by her beauty. The past three weeks in Europe had been more difficult than he had let on – he missed their conversations, he missed hearing her voice in his ear and her laugh when he told her about his day. It wasn't that they hadn't spoken, but he had gotten used to their hours-long phone calls each night and the time difference simply hadn't allowed for that. And when that fateful phone call came from his father, he had wished that she were there with him so he could wrap his arms around her and make the world disappear. He was overpowered by the relief he had felt when she had walked into the surgical waiting room, and he was grateful that she had been there to help him through what was arguably one of the most difficult days of his life.

When he had finally broken down in her arms last night, he watched the last wall that stood between them crumble, and he finally released to her the mixed bag of emotions he'd kept in all day – his fear of his mother's surgery, his worries for what life would have be like for their family if she hadn't survived, his anguish at watching his father and Ari cry, and finally, his relief that things were going to be okay. Artie knew that there were unspoken changes in the way they interacted, a stronger form of mutual dependence and longing creeping into their conversations. She was quickly regaining her place as one of the most important people in his world, his closest confidant and his best friend, and he hoped that before they were separated again, he could deepen that connection and show her just how much he wanted her to be a part of his life.

The way they fit together was absolutely incredible and Artie tightened the arm across her stomach, pulling her even closer to his chest. He wasn't sure how long he was awake, just gazing at her body molded within his, before he felt her stirring. Leaning down, he pressed a gentle kiss against her shoulder and moved her hair out of the way, exposing more of her face and the soft expanse of her neck. He could tell the moment that she fully awoke and realized where she was because she stiffened for just a second, but then relaxed again and rolled her body so that her head was just under his chin, her nose gently grazing his Adam's apple and their chests touching. He could feel her breathing even more acutely now, the soft warmth of each breath tickling the hollow of his neck. One of his hands slid up the back of her scalp and into her hair, massaging gently, and the other wrapped itself around her waist, coming to rest against her lower back. She clutched a fistful of his t-shirt, throwing one leg over his to help him better stay situated on his side and breathed in the comfortingly spicy smell she'd long come to associate with Artie.

Neither of them spoke for several minutes as they lay there holding one another. Finally, Artie pulled back just enough to gaze softly at her face, and she opened her dark eyes to meet his love-filled ones as he conveyed his tender message to her. His lips moved gently over her eyelids – first one, then the other – and she slowly raised her face to receive his kiss on her mouth. She let her head rest back against the crook of his arm as they both closed their eyes and their lips met in a tender first kiss. His lips brushed against hers, soft and strong, so sensuously that Tina pulled back slightly, surprised at the depth of her reaction to him. His lips moved over hers again and she felt her body turn into jelly, sinking deeper into his arms. Artie felt her lips part and his tongue met hers in a tender, questioning caress; the kiss deepened and suddenly everything was different as they drifted in and out of a half-conscious state with their joined lips their only link to the world around them.

Reluctantly, they broke apart and each tried to slow their breathing. Tina ran her fingers down his face, memorizing every curve and hollow of his perfectly molded features, and Artie rubbed her back gently, running his fingers up and down her spine as she shivered at the contact.

"I've waited so long to finally do that again," he whispered, punctuating the statement with another gentle kiss against her delicately swollen lips. She held on to him, sucking lightly on his bottom lip as he tried to pull away and causing him to moan quietly, clutching at her back blindly to pull her body closer to his. He deepened the contact, pressing more forcefully against their joined mouths and begged her to allow him deeper access. She complied, her hand sliding up to the back of his neck and pulling his head down closer to hers as their tongues danced, her fingers drawing figure eights on the back of his scalp in time with the kiss.

When their lips finally released each other again, Tina found it dizzyingly hard to breathe, the closeness of his face against hers making it even more difficult to concentrate. She moved her hand down from behind his head to his shoulder, pushing Artie gently so that he rolled flat onto his back and she curled up against one side of him, her head resting on his chest and one leg thrown haphazardly over his. His fingers stroked the long dark locks fanned over his shoulder and he dropped a peck somewhere in her hair.

They laid there, a tangle of limbs and soft caresses, and watched the sun further illuminate his childhood bedroom. "Almost feels like déjà vu," she finally whispered.

Artie chuckled. He could remember like it was yesterday the heated make-out sessions they had had in his room back in high school, always with the slight fear that one of his parents or his sister would walk in on them in a state of disarray. Those kisses were good, but they paled in comparison to the tender embrace they had just shared. They stayed there in silence, an unspoken agreement passing between them, acknowledging that their relationship had been forever changed but both content with the notion that given the past few months, this was where they had inevitably been headed.

"Ari will be awake soon, we should get ready to get back to the hospital," Tina said quietly, breaking through the spell that had fallen over the pair.

"Yeah," Artie agreed reluctantly, releasing his hold on her so that she could sit up on the bed. She smiled down at him as he folded both hands behind his head, leaning against the headboard. She reached over to the bedside table and took hold of his glasses, slipping the frames onto his face and pushing back his hair, smirking as he raised one eyebrow at her actions. He moved one arm and ran his fingers along her pajama covered thigh, ending at her knee and gave it a gentle squeeze. Tina smiled.

Breakfast was a quiet affair, and if Ari noticed the changed atmosphere between her brother and Tina, she didn't say anything. It wasn't that anything particularly noticeable was different between them, but the air seemed to be more familiar, more comfortable, less restrained. Artie was liberal with his gentle touches, seeming to always have a hand on her somewhere and flashing that trademark Artie smile at her every time their eyes met.

After gathering some things for Elizabeth Abrams and a change of clothes for John, the trio made their way to Lima General Hospital, Ari driving the family van and Artie and Tina seated together in the back seat, his arm wrapped around her shoulders and her hand resting gently against his stomach. The mood was much less somber as they made their way to the ICU this time and they were rewarded with hugs from John and a smile of greeting from Elizabeth as they walked into her room. Tina excused herself to call Mercedes, wanting to give the Abrams family some privacy as they gathered around the most important woman in their lives.

Elizabeth watched as Artie's eyes followed Tina out of the room, and stayed on her through the glass walls of the ICU, watching as she walked up and down the hallways, animatedly having a conversation with someone on the phone. She gently cleared her throat to get Artie's attention, and as her son's eyes sheepishly turned back to meet her own, the teasing sparkle in her expression caused Artie to groan.

"Mom –" he started, "it's not what you think."

"Oh I think it's exactly what I think," she replied lightly. Ari nodded her head in affirmation and Artie shot her a glare, warning his sister to mind her own business. Ari ignored him and walked closer to her mother's bedside, taking one of her hands and leaning down to whisper not-so-subtlely in her ear "_exactly what you think_."

Artie rolled his eyes and wheeled himself over to the bed as well, pushing Ari out of the way and claiming the hand she had held for himself, gently stroking his mother's palm and asking, "how are you feeling today Mom?"

His distraction technique didn't work. His mother simply smiled at him and squeezed his fingers, saying jovially, "nice try honey, I'm feeling much less like a two ton wall fell on my chest but I'm still waiting for you to explain the presence of that lovely young lady out there."

Artie's father chuckled from his corner of the room, feeling the weight on his shoulders lighten dramatically as Artie suffered the teasing of his mother and sister. Watching his wife grill Artie like she had always done, pushing him to reveal the details of his love life that he tried so desperately to keep private was all the reassurance that he needed that things were beginning to look up.

"I don't know what you want me to say," Artie groaned, hiding his face in the edge of the hospital bed.

"Let's start with where Tina slept last night," Ari prompted, ignoring the daggers Artie shot in her direction. She'd gone to his room at some point in the middle of the night, having woken up and not wanting to be alone. The sight that had greeted her when she opened the door was of Artie and Tina tangled up in each other sleeping contently, and she'd tiptoed back to her room, not wanting to disturb the sleeping pair.

His mother raised one eyebrow, waiting for Artie to explain, and he felt as if he were sixteen again and in trouble for having a girl in his room. He sighed, trying to put into words the character of his rekindled relationship with Tina but failing to be able to adequately describe it – even to himself. "It's all…very new," he finally admitted, looking up at his mother with an expression of unguarded love, "when I figure it out, I promise you'll be the first to know." Tears prickled in Elizabeth Abrams' eyes as Artie spoke and she simply squeezed his hand in return.

Tina reappeared with the surgical resident assigned to his mother's care, and the two of them conversed quietly in what Artie was beginning to refer to as medi-speak, a dialect that apparently only made sense to doctors. As the resident turned to address his parents, Tina resumed her position behind his chair, resting one hand naturally on his shoulder as he reach up to clasp it in his own.

"How are you feeling this morning Mrs. Abrams?" the resident asked.

"Much better," she replied, "still quite a bit of pain but this medication drip you have me on is working pretty well."

"Excellent. Well your vitals look great, your fluid levels and electrolyte levels are exactly where we expect them to be. The incision for the surgery is healing nicely so I think we'll move you down to the general medicine floor sometime later today."

"Oh thank god," Mrs. Abrams replied, "maybe then I can finally get some sleep without someone coming in to poke and prod at me every 15 minutes."

The surgical resident and Tina chuckled at her complaint, having heard it from just about every other patient who passed through the ICU. The fact that her spirits were high enough to complain about the constant disturbances in the ICU was a sign that she was on the right track to recovery.

"I think if you want, you can try and start having some liquids today," the resident continued, "a little juice, maybe a little chicken broth. Nothing heavy, okay? We don't want to overload your body. Once they get you down to the general medicine floor, physical therapy will come in and they're going to get you sitting up soon – we want to get you moving around as soon as possible."

"Are you serious?" Artie asked, "she just had her chest cracked open. Should she really be moving around?"

The resident looked at Tina before answering, not sure exactly who Artie was addressing. Tina took his cue and leaned down slightly, explaining, "we definitely want her moving around – the movement will help the blood flow through her muscles and make her recovery much easier – the longer she stays in bed, the harder it will be for her to get back her strength."

Walking to stand in front of him, she held his gaze and continued gently, "don't worry – the physical therapists are very experienced working with patients coming out of this exact same surgery, and they'll know exactly what she is and isn't capable of doing. We won't hurt her," she reassured.

Elizabeth Abrams watched the interaction between Artie and Tina, and she noticed how easily she had been able to soothe his concerns, and how much he trusted her opinion. As difficult as it had been for her son to find the words to explain what was going on between him and his best friend, she knew – her mother's intuition told her – that it was only a matter of time before he admitted to himself exactly how he felt about the young woman who had dropped everything to be by his side simply because he needed her.


	13. Chapter 13

They moved Elizabeth down to the general medical floor just before dinner, and she was resting comfortably when Artie and Tina left, leaving his dad and Ari at the hospital to keep her company. Elizabeth had insisted that the pair go out to dinner, jokingly accusing Artie of not only making Tina come all the way to Lima but also depriving her of real food. Artie had blushed at his mother's less than subtle attempt at matchmaking before realizing that she actually had a point – they hadn't had anything that didn't come out of a vending machine since who knows when, too preoccupied with everything else to think about sitting down for an actual meal.

She held the door for him as they made their way into Breadstix, having decided to head back to their old stomping ground for nostalgia's sake. For a brief second, Artie's thoughts flashed to what it might have been like were _he_ able to hold the door open for _her_, to walk in besides her with his hand guiding her on the small of her back. It was only a fantasy in his mind – he knew that Tina had long gotten used to the chair and often forgot that he was even in one – but he couldn't always push the idea that she deserved someone better, someone who was one hundred percent, back into the dark box in the crevices of his mind where his frustrated, self-doubting thoughts lived.

Tina flashed a smile at him as they waited for the hostess to seat them, and he smiled back. It was so easy for her to raise his spirits, just by being around him. "Do you think they still have the endless, endless, pasta dinner?" Tina wondered with a laugh, looking pointedly at Artie as she mentioned it.

"Ugh," he groaned, "don't even." Breadstix had started their "endless, endless pasta dinner" promotion senior year of high school, an all-you-can-eat selection of noodles with the added benefit being that the person who ate the most at the table got his meal on the house. Artie, Mike, Puck, and Finn had taken the restaurant up on the challenge, each boy scarfing down plate after plate of pasta until Artie thought for sure that lasagna was coming out of his ears. He hadn't been able to eat pasta of any sort for _months_ after that, and Tina had had way too much fun laughing at all of them for it ever since.

"I'm just saying," she continued as they made their way towards their table, "I think you'd actually maybe have a shot at winning tonight." Artie rolled his eyes, smacking her gently across the arm for her impish delight at his suffering.

They used to have quirk whenever they ate Breadstix. Tina would order what she wanted to eat or what she thought she wanted to or should eat, and then she'd make adamant suggestions as to what Artie should order. If she ordered salad, he knew that she'd be suggesting "oh, you really liked the baked ziti last time" or "don't you feel like something cheesy?" – he'd long learned that he would more than likely end up eating half of whatever she ordered while she helped herself to whatever was on his plate.

Glancing down at the menu, Tina chewed on her lip ever so slightly as she perused it, trying to decide what she wanted for dinner. Artie simply sat across from her and watched her with an amused expression, waiting for her suggestion to come across the table.

"I think I want the linguine," she finally announced, looking up from her menu, "what are you gonna get?"

"I'm not sure," he started, "maybe the chicken, or the lasagna."

"I think you really liked the seafood alfredo before," she suggested, "with shrimp."

"Oh yeah?" he asked with a raised eyebrow, "I don't think I've ever had that before."

"I really think you'd like the shrimp tonight," she insisted, knowing that this was the game they played, and amused that he was still playing along.

"Alright," Artie agreed, closing his menu and placing it on the edge of the table, signaling to the young waitress that they were ready to order.

Tina smirked. His seafood alfredo looked incredibly delicious when it arrived, and she helped herself to his plate, stabbing at a piece of shrimp while shoveling out half of her linguine onto another dish for him. Artie attacked his food with gusto and was just twirling the last piece of pasta onto his fork when Tina made her announcement.

"I think I might fly back to New York tomorrow night," she said softly from across the table. Artie's hands instantly stilled, and he looked up at her in a mix of confusion and surprise.

"Why?" he choked out, not quite sure he wanted to know the reason she was leaving.

"Well I have patients lined up…and work," she explained practically, knowing that he would be upset and hoping he would understand that she had an obligation to her job. She wasn't sure how long Artie expected her to stay in Lima, or how long he himself was planning to stay at home, but with Christmas less than two weeks away, she simply couldn't cancel on all of her patients and not see them again until the new year. "Your mom is doing well and recovering nicely," she added, "she'll be going home soon so you guys won't need me in the hospital anymore."

"But I need you here," he insisted, "I want you here."

"I'll be back for Christmas," she consoled, focusing her attention on a stray crumb on the tablecloth. Artie, too, found it difficult to maintain eye contact.

The mood between them was changed. The rational side of Artie's brain knew that he couldn't expect her to simply drop her life for two weeks to stay with him – that wasn't her job. But the emotional part, the part less rooted in reality, was angry that he had just gotten her back in his life and she was leaving again. The timing of her announcement caused him to worry. Had she regretted what passed between them that morning, and was running away to New York? He wondered if he had pushed her too hard or if he had simply read all the signs wrong and she had in fact not felt the same way about him.

Tina stayed in silence on her side of the table as well. She had known that Artie wouldn't take her announcement of going back to New York particularly well, and she had debated with herself as to whether or not to leave. It wasn't that she didn't have the vacation time, or that she couldn't find anyone to cover for her in the practice or the hospital. She felt the need to go back to her life for a few days, to reassure herself that she still had one that didn't revolve solely around him. As much as she had enjoyed waking up with Artie that morning and everything else that had transpired between them, she wondered if he was aware of what he was doing, or if he was simply reaching out for the human contact given the emotional turmoil of his mother's accident. She didn't want to get caught up in something – in his life – only to find out later that there was no room for her to fit into his world.

Artie paid the bill quietly, pushing Tina's credit card back to her across the table when she tried to pay. The pair silently made their way out onto the sidewalk, opting to walk the few blocks back to the Abrams residence. The night air was chilly but Artie was grateful for the wind – it meant that the coldness could numb his senses for the time being, stopping him from voicing his frustration that this – thing – with Tina was still so blurry and tentative.

Tina unlocked the door to the Abrams residence slowly, holding it open so that Artie could roll himself inside. He stopped in the foyer, watching as she took off her coat and draped it carefully over the back of an armchair. The atmosphere was awkward, and Artie knew that the longer he waited to do something about it, the more awkward it would get.

"Do you, uh," he cleared his throat, "do you want to watch a movie or something?"

"I don't know," she replied quietly, "it's kind of been a long day."

"Come on, we'll put in something mindless and just relax a little," he insisted, needing to solve this, to hold on to the Tina he had had for the past few days, before she pulled away from him.

Tina nodded, walking over to the entertainment center in the family room and flipping through the DVDs lined up on the shelf, randomly picking something – an Owen Wilson comedy – and plopping it into the machine. Artie rolled himself over to the large sofa, transferring himself out of the chair and laying back across the couch, patting the space next to him in an invitation to Tina. She climbed over his legs, curling up between his body and the back of the couch, throwing an afghan over them and laid her head down against his chest. It felt so normal to lie there tangled up in Artie, and she struggled to remember what it had been like before he waltzed back into her life, and how she would adjust once they went back to their respective lives on opposite sides of the country.

They watched the movie in silence, neither wanting to break the peace that had settled over them. Artie stroked her hair gently and drew swirls against her shoulder with his finger, enjoying the closeness of their bodies and the soft steadiness of her breathing. Tina settled down against the expanse of his chest, enjoying the broad shouldered hardness his embrace offered. She could feel him occasionally bend his chin down to press his nose or his lips to her hair, and she snuggled in a little bit closer each time he kissed her head wanting to commit to the deepest of memories the feeling of safety and tenderness she found in his arms.

Artie reached for the remote and shut off the TV once the final credits rolled across the screen. Tina was still wrapped around his body, one leg thrown over his and her arm wrapped around his torso as she cuddled up against his side. His hand was still tangled in the silky strands of her hair and his lips hovered over her forehead, waiting for the appropriate moment to drop yet another light kiss. Not a word had passed between them except for the basic necessities since leaving Breadstix and Artie hoped that the tenuous physical connection that still linked them was sufficient to help them work through whatever issues hid under the surface.

He could feel Tina shifting slightly, making to rise from the couch. He clutched her body to his a little bit tighter, preventing her from getting up and she craned her neck to look up at him, her dark eyes wavering with a hint of sadness as his hand sought out hers to link their fingers.

"I need you in my life Tee," he finally whispered watching as a tear made its way to the surface, slipping down her perfect porcelain cheek. "Please don't run away from me," he pleaded, his voice cracking just slightly as he tried to maintain his composure.

Tina turned onto her stomach, sliding up his body until they were nose to nose, their foreheads just centimeters apart and her small hands reaching up to cup his face.

"I don't know if we can do this," she replied letting the salty tears flow down her face and fall onto his perfectly chiseled features. "I don't know if it can work."

"What are you scared of?" he asked softly, running both hands in calming circles along her back and pulling her body closer to his. He knew that Tina was hesitant – he didn't want to risk their newly rekindled friendship either – but he wanted her too much to simply let their bicoastal lives define their existence.

"Tee?" he prompted again, slipping one finger under her chin to force her to look into his eyes, "what are you scared of?"

"Losing you again," she whispered, dropping her head into the crook of his neck and burying her face in his soft skin, her tears cutting through him.

* * *

><p>AN: Oh, I know - it got all angsty again. They just really wanted to be angsty in my head though! There might be a little more fluff in the next chapter :) What do you guys think - will Tina go back to New York? Or will Artie convince her to stay a little while longer? Also, the gang will all be back in Lima for Christmas in less than two weeks - that should be interesting! Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	14. Chapter 14

He didn't know how to reassure her. It wasn't possible to undo the fifteen years that had passed before their eyes, when they had seemingly walked out of each others lives without as much as a backwards glance. He could only brush aside the tears streaming down her face, trying to convey with tender caresses and expressive glances how much he cared about her and wanted to be with her. He didn't want her to give up, to choose friendship over the exploration of something more, but he couldn't fault her because he'd given her no reason to believe that this time it would be different, that they weren't still the naïve college sophomores struggling to figure out how to maintain a cross-country friendship. Artie wondered if he would be okay just having her as a friend, to give up the intimacy they had renewed. He wondered if he could breathe watching her be with someone else, knowing he hadn't been brave enough to wager the whole hand and take that leap of faith.

Tina watched him as he processed what she had said, a crescent of tears pooling in the corners of his eyes much like the ones on her face. She knew that he wanted her – that much she was sure of – but she didn't know if she could bear to lose him again if it somehow ended badly. The way he looked at her though - her heart fluttered though every time he looked at her much like he was looking at her now, his eyes drinking her in and his expression one of appreciative awe, like she was the vision of eternal beauty. Her expression softened as she lost herself within the depth of his eyes, pools of sapphire blue that were filled with so much adoration and concern.

Needing the physical reassurance, she leaned down, pressing her lips to his softy, and then with an insistent urgency, crushing their mouths together. He reciprocated instantaneously, running his tongue against hers and sucking her deeper into his vortex of emotions. She whimpered as he hungrily pulled her mouth even closer, needing to feel her against his body and needing to convey to her the extent of his desire for her through his lips. It was unlike any other kiss they had ever shared – this one was full of passion and fire, an awakening of senses both had tried to suppress in their quest to protect each others' hearts.

Tina pulled back, gasping for air and he took advantage of her arched position to latch his lips to her neck, kissing a light chain down the muscles and ending just above her collarbone. He sucked gently at the hollow at the base of her throat and she moaned quietly, burying her hands and face in his hair and pressing his mouth more firmly against her chest. She started a trail down his ear, sucking and licking with the barest flicks of her tongue as he felt the shockwaves of pleasure shoot down from his earlobe to deep within the recesses of his stomach. Gasping, he wrenched her attention away from his earlobe and she hovered above him supporting her weight on her outstretched arms. Their eyes met and tried to focus, her clouded with desire and his filled with reverence and heat. The room was silent but for their panting breaths, and Artie felt a surge of need for her as she rested above him, her hair framing her face in messy waves and her lips cherry red from arousal.

What he couldn't express in words, he tried to show her with his hands and his lips and at that moment, he needed to convince her that it was all worth it – that they needed to explore how good they could be together in order for life to be worth living. Wrapping his arms around her waist, he rolled them so that his spine was pressed against the back cushions of the couch. The support helped him to stay balanced on his side and freed his hands to maneuver their bodies and to stroke the full length of her glorious figure.

Capturing her lips again, he reignited the passion, circling her mouth with nips and teases until she whimpered with desire and forced him to fuse their lips in a wet, frantic exchange. He kept one hand under her chin at the side of her neck, supporting her head as their lips continued a passionate dance, their breaths and their needs exchanging amidst the pressure of their kiss. He ran the other hand up slowly along the curve of her hip, past the dip of her waist until it settled at the side of her breast. His thumb reached in, circling the softness as his hand inched little by little towards the swell of her chest. When his hand finally braved its way to encircle her breast, his palm pressed gently along the surface and his fingers squeezed softly. She gasped into his mouth and moaned, encouraging him to knead a little more firmly, watching as the slight movements of his fingers caused small cries of pleasure to escape from her lips.

Tina tugged on his shirt, running her fingers along the bottom edge and then snaking them up under, skimming her nails over the bare expanses of his stomach. Artie bit back a groan and pressed his body against hers harder, trapping her hands between them and needing to feel every inch of her body against his. He lowered his head to nip at her neck and Tina threw her head back to allow him better access, arching her back and creating the most delicious pressure against their joined bodies. She pulled on his shirt again, tugging upwards this time and Artie acquiesced to her request, raising his arms slightly and allowing her to slip the shirt from his shoulders, tugging the offending piece of material over his head and tossing it over the back of the couch. Time seemed to stop and Tin simply started at his chest, breathing shallowly. Reaching out to run her hand down his broad shoulders and over his pectoral muscles, she flicked one finger over his nipple gently and he sucked in a quick breath.

He needed more of her. He pulled at her face until his lips found her again, sloppily pressing kisses against her mouth and her face while grasping at her shirt and her breasts – wherever his hands could reach. He boldly reached down and helped her pull her shirt over her head, leaving her only in a black satin bra, the contrast of the dark silk against her milky skin creating a heated buzzing in his head. She pulled on his shoulder while pushing him onto his back, then threw one leg over his body as she straddled him, causing Artie to suck in a sharp intake of breath as she settled onto his lap. Leaning down over him, she let her dark hair fan over their faces, creating a waterfall of silky strands around them, separating their faces and their mingling breaths from the rest of the world around them. He reached up to cup her cheek, pulling her down for a tender, soft kiss.

"You are so beautiful," he sighed, running a hand down her bare back and then up the side of her body, coming to a rest at her waist and holding her in place above him. There was an unspoken agreement that things wouldn't go any further that evening, not without solving the wave pools of issues that still stood between them. Artie took advantage of her seated position to run both hand up and down the sides of her torso, circling over her stomach, up over her breasts and her collarbone, and down her back. His fingers marveled at the softness of her skin, the way it shimmered in the moonlight sneaking in through the window. The contrast of her dark hair tumbling down her shoulders, her rosy lips, and her creamy skin stirring every nerve fiber in his body with desire.

Tina lowered herself to lie across his chest, covering his legs with her own and maintaining as much skin-to-skin contact with him as possible. She pulled on the afghan, rearranging it so it better covered their bodies and tucked her head just under his chin, her face coming to rest just over his heart. His arms immediately came around to wrap around her tightly, pulling her close. He sighed. She was perfect in his arms, and he couldn't remember a time when he had been more physically content.

He didn't want to push her – he didn't know how things would work out between them either and he definitely didn't have a solution to allay her fear that they would somehow lose each other again. But the way he felt holding her in his arm, and the indescribable way his mind spun every time she kissed him, he needed to fight for that and not let her run away from it all back into a friendship wrought with unfulfilled desire.

"Why did you come to Lima," he asked her softly. She lifted her head off his chest to meet his gaze.

"Because you needed me," she responded almost immediately, echoing her earlier pronouncement.

"No, but why did you come – I know why I called you – but why did you come?" he insisted.

"Because…" she lowered her head and his hand immediately flew under her chin, raising it gently until she met his eyes again. "Because I wanted to see you," she finished slowly, "I wanted to be here for you."

He took a deep breath, pulling her down into his body and burying his face in the crook of her neck. "If you hadn't been here," he murmured softly against her skin, "I don't know what I would have done. I don't think I could have kept it together."

She rubbed his arms gently. "I know," she said softly against his temple, "I'll always be here for you."

/**/

Artie drove her to the airport the following afternoon, pulling up to the departures entrance and parking the van in a handicapped spot. They hadn't cleared much air the previous night, having simply fallen asleep on the couch holding each other, and they'd avoided talking about the topic all day as well.

Tina hesitated before getting out of the van, needing just a little bit more closure from him before she walked back into her own life. Glancing softly to her left, she saw him watching her and she smiled wryly, wondering if the elephants doing somersaults in her stomach were simply nerves or something else. He reached his hand towards her and tugged gently, flicking his head ever so slightly and motioning for her to climb over towards him. She settled onto his lap, the small space of the van forcing their bodies close together and their faces inches apart. Artie pressed something soft and small into the palm of her hand, and she looked down in surprise. She pulled the yellow fuzz ball closer to her face to examine it – it was the Pooh keychain she'd given him so many years ago – the exact same one he had almost lost in the taxi so many months ago in New York.

Her breath caught in her throat. Why was he giving it back to her? The bear had always been an unofficial reminder of the two of them – of their friendship. He had one, and she had the other. Why then, did he not want his anymore?

Artie curled his fingers around her hand, squeezing the small keychain tightly into her grasp. "After you gave me this, I had to learn how to live without you," he whispered, watching as her eyes glimmered as they filled with a sheen of tears. The keychain had been in the last college fun box she had ever sent him their sophomore year, and soon after, they'd drifted apart, each focusing on their own lives – she in New York, and he in LA.

"I've kept it with me all these years because it was my only link to you. But I'm giving it back to you because I don't want to learn how to live without you anymore," he finished, "don't run away from me Tee, please."

She nodded, knowing what he was trying to do.

She needed to go back to New York though. For fifteen years, she had learned to live without her best friend, building a life for herself that was successful and content. And she needed to go back to that life, to remind herself that she could be happy even without him by her side. Because only then could she take that leap – to give herself to the idea that with him, her life would be even richer, even fuller.

Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to his, tasting the saltiness of their mixed tears. His hands gripped hers and he crushed her to his chest, kissing her passionately, trying to convey to her just how much she meant to him through that one last kiss.

Pulling back, she swiped at the tears on her cheek and gave him a wavering smile. She ran her fingers through his hair, trying to memorize every feature of his face before moving to get out of the van. Linking their fingers, he said to her softly one last time, "don't run away from me Tee – please."

She nodded, pressing the small keychain she still clutched in her hand against her chest.

"I'll see you at Christmas," she quietly assured.

* * *

><p>AN: Thanks to everyone for the wonderful reviews! Pooh Bear has made a reappearance - I think this may actually be one of his last appearances before the story is over despite him being the inspiration for the title. Artie is still in Lima, Tina has gone back to New York. I'm not entirely sure yet how it will all be resolved, so suggestions are welcome! Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	15. Chapter 15

A/N: Sorry for the delay - I had a bit of a difficult time writing this chapter and I'm not convinced it's exactly conveying the depth of emotion that I want it to, but I didn't want to keep you guys waiting. Hope you enjoy it nonetheless - Artie and Tina are doing lots of talking here but I think it's important to both of them to hash out their issues. Please read and review - I'd love to hear your thoughts!

* * *

><p>Slipping back into the routine of her life in New York was easier than she had expected. Trying to make up for the time that she had taken off, Tina saw anywhere between twenty-five and thirty private patients per day, and covered shifts in the emergency room in addition to her clinic duties. She caught up on all of the meeting minutes from the committee discussions she had missed in her absence, and she filled out evaluation after evaluation for her medical student, who was finishing up his rotation at the end of the month and moving on to a different specialty. It was tiring work, but it made her happy – there wasn't anything quite like being in control in a trauma room full of heightened emotions and frantic movements to prove to herself that she had what it took – to be calm and levelheaded in a situation of turmoil, and she quietly celebrated every triumph, and every successful resuscitation.<p>

She had been back at work for four days when Kurt decided that he had had enough, and he showed up in the emergency room at three in the morning, dragging along a sleepy Mercedes and a sheepish-looking Rachel, demanding a full play-by-play of what exactly had transpired in Lima. She had avoided talking about it in too much detail with her friends, not knowing how she herself felt about it all, and she tried waving off his argument that she didn't have any patients at three in the morning, pointing to the teetering stack of patients charts threatening to bury her desk and starting to list off all of the patients she had admitted earlier in the evening for monitoring. Kurt wasn't having any of it though, plopping down on the small sofa in her office and planting himself there until she finally sighed, settling in to fill in the holes of the bare-bones version she had relayed to Mercedes over the phone.

She watched a full Shakespearean drama play out in Kurt's face as he reacted to her story – his shock at the extent of Mrs. Abrams' surgery, his relief that she was doing much better, his nervous excitement when she told him about those first hours in the waiting room with Artie, and his tearful "aww" when she uncomfortably relayed the circumstances of that first kiss in Artie's bed, and the steamy one that had followed their dinner at Breadstix. When she finally reached the part where she had left Artie at the airport in Lima and boarded a plane back to New York, her three friends had surrounded her, pulling her into a hug that shared in her desire for independence and her desire for the boy who had always lingered in her heart.

As usual, it was Mercedes who jumped in with the first comment – she empathized with Tina's decision to try and protect her heart – to hold on to Artie as a friend because losing him as one would simply hurt too much – but she knew that if Tina let Artie slip through her fingers because she wasn't willing to take a risk for love, the young doctor's heart would be irreparably broken. And this idea that she needed to know how to be happy with the life she had built for herself through her career before she could be with someone – Mercedes saw right through that before Tina was even done explaining herself.

"What else do you need to prove to yourself?" she asked, pulling a random award off of Tina's shelf and forcing it into her hands, "you've already achieved so much in your career – you've saved lives, you've won awards, you've even shaped the future of the medicine in this country – what more do you need to prove to be satisfied?"

"It's not about professional success," Tina insisted, walking the plaque back to its home on her bookshelf, "it about respecting the work that I've put in to my career, and proving that I can be my own person, and I can be happy."

"But you're not," Kurt said quietly. Walking over to stand directly in front of Tina and taking both of her hands in his, he asked, "can you really say that all this – the degrees, and the patients, and the long hours – this is truly what makes you happy?"

"You don't understand," Tina sighed, letting go of his hands and turning around, hugging herself around her white coat and readjusting the stethoscope that hung around her neck, "my work – it gives me validation that I can be something, that I can make a difference in someone's life. But what makes me happy is knowing that I can do this work, and I can go back to my apartment, and I can just live this life and be content with it – that I can just be content with everything that I've worked so hard for."

"But does it only have to be things that you've worked for that makes your life whole?" Rachel asked, standing up to join Kurt and Mercedes, "why not let Artie in? He wants to be a part of your life Tee – why not let him?"

"Because it's not that simple," she replied softly, not wanting to reveal her fears. She knew that Mercedes, Kurt, and Rachel thought that is was a simple equation of want plus need equals happiness. If she had everything she needed, and got everything she wanted – she'd be happy. But what happened when what she wanted didn't want her? Or if he realized later on that he didn't want to be with her? Or walked out of her life again because they simply couldn't make a relationship work? She could control the things that she needed – she had full say over the need to work, the basic needs of her life, and the needs of her patients; but her wants – they were up to someone else to fulfill.

"But it is that simple Tee," Kurt insisted, "it is." He knew that she was scared of pursuing anything with Artie because she was afraid of loving and then losing him again. The need to control the aspects of happiness stemmed from that fear, and she had somehow convinced herself that work, and her lonely life in New York, were the only things she needed to be content.

Stepping closer to her, he linked hands with her again, watching as Mercedes placed a hand on her shoulder, and Rachel gently rubbed her back. "Sometimes we can't control everything Tee," he told her quietly, "you know that – you could be the best doctor in the world and do everything correctly and to the utmost degree of perfection – but you still might not be successful. You see that every day in the ER."

"But sometimes, when you let something in, something that's outside of your control – that's when the magic and the miracles happen," he continued, "so you have to be willing to take that risk."

"You've already found who you are Tee," Rachel added, "you're an amazing doctor and you're the best friend any of us could ever ask for. But you'll never be truly happy if you keep your heart hidden behind this white coat – life's not just about work. Haven't the past fifteen years already shown you that you can be an amazing person simply because of your own achievements? Artie knows that. But Tee – if being with him makes you feel like your heart is so fluttery your feet never touch the ground – then why not let him make you feel that way? You don't have to pick the happiness of your career over the happiness of being with him."

"I just don't know if I could lose him again," she finally admitted, "I don't know if I could let him in to my heart and lose it all."

"And maybe you'll never have to find out," Kurt said with a small smile. Pressing forward before Tina could contradict him, he insisted, "or maybe you guys just aren't meant to be. But regardless, isn't it better to have let yourself love him than to always wonder what might have been? You've already wondered that for fifteen years honey – it's time to stop wondering."

Tina was silent. She tried to agree with Kurt – to agree with all of her friends – that it was all worth pursuing. That she didn't need to prove to herself that she could be happy without him in order to be with him. But the words simply wouldn't appear on the tip of her tongue – she couldn't force herself to let go of her insecurities and plunge forward into the unknown.

/**/

Tina was quiet on the phone that night when Artie called. They had resumed their nightly phone conversations, often keeping each other on the line for hours upon hours until one of them fell asleep. Artie looked forward to the phone calls – it broke the monotony of his days watching his mother slowly recover from her surgery and helping her with her physical therapy. It was also his only consolation that Tina was still there, and still coming back to Lima for Christmas.

Though she wouldn't admit it to herself or to anyone else, Tina looked forward to those phone calls too. She liked being able to zone out of the stress of the hospital and her job and simply listen to Artie tell her about his day – about how he woke up at 10am, helped his mom with physical therapy, had turkey on white bread for lunch, and watched Ari wrap Christmas presents all afternoon. She knew he was itching to go back to his job – he often mentioned that he was listening to demo songs or speaking with his assistant back in LA – but the fact that he was willing to put everything on hold to keep his mother company while she recovered completely warmed Tina's heart.

Artie knew that something was up with Tina, and he hoped that as the conversation progressed, she'd feel comfortable enough to share with him whatever was on her mind. But two hours into the call, after they had talked about her day and his day and she still seemed unwilling to share, he decided to bite the bullet and simply ask her.

"Hey Pooh Bear? Is everything okay?" He tried to keep his tone light, knowing that she was probably hesitant to talk about whatever was bothering her. But at the same time, he didn't want her to think that he didn't care. Artie could almost see Tina's eyes go wide at the other end of the line.

"Yeah, everything is fine," she finally insisted, "why do you ask?"

"I don't know – you just seem a bit distant is all. You sure there's nothing you want to talk about?"

Tina debated letting him know what was going through her mind. Ever since that visit (more accurately labeled as an intervention) from Kurt, Mercedes and Rachel in the wee hours of the morning, she had had a hard time focusing. All day, she had been running through the images of the past fifteen years, and wondering how she had convinced herself that she didn't need Artie – why she hadn't reached out to include him in those important moments and why he hadn't tried to reach her.

"Just doing some thinking," she mumbled quietly.

"Thinking about what?" Artie prompted gently, knowing that whatever was bothering her would probably have quite a significant influence on the two of them ever being able to move forward. He held his breath as he waited for her to answer, wondering _if_ they'd be able to move forward.

"How come we never tried to fight for our friendship Artie?" she finally asked. Her voice was breathless and strained, almost as if she were holding back tears and anger at the same time. His mouth dried and his throat was suddenly scratchy, forcing his voice to catch – he'd often wondered the same thing. _Why hadn't either of them ever tried to make the friendship work? Why had they let go so easily?_

"I just wanted you to be happy," was his mumbled reply, "and I figured that you were happy with Lucas, and when we drifted apart – I guess it was just easier to believe that you were busy with him and happy with your life to have time for me, so I didn't bother you."

His response should have made her feel guilty, but she was surprised to find that disbelief and annoyance were the only emotions clouding her head.

"That's a cop out Artie," she insisted, "never once did I ever force you to feel like you played second fiddle to Lucas – I never even talked about the guy with you! You don't get to play the 'I just wanted you to be happy' card."

"What do you want me to say Tee? That I was scared you didn't feel the same way I did? That I thought a girl like you would never actually be satisfied by a guy like me? That I thought you deserved better? Yes. I let you go because I was too scared to fight for you. But I didn't see you struggling to keep me in your life so I didn't think it bothered you that much!" Artie's voice was a mixture of hysteria and emotion, anger and resignation and Tina's breath caught in her throat as he admitted his insecurities to her.

"Is that really what you think? That I'm what – too good for you?" she asked incredulously. "What have I _ever_ done to make you think that?"

"Look at the guys you dated!" Artie screeched, trying to restrain his voice to a normal volume, "they were everything that I wasn't. What was I supposed to think?"

"But they weren't you," Tina insisted, "I kept waiting for you and you never did anything about it!"

"Tee – I was a mess trying to keep it together, watching you live your life and date Lucas and flirt with guys. I focused on school and then threw myself into work because I needed that to keep me sane. I'd watched you for so long that I just couldn't do it anymore. It was easier to convince myself that you were happy with someone else because I couldn't give you everything that you wanted. I didn't reach out to you because I couldn't pretend to be happy for you – I didn't want to pretend that I was okay with it all. Tee – you were the most beautiful girl and the most amazing woman I'd ever known…and I couldn't have you," Artie trailed off, silence coming through loudly between them as they each tried to process what he had just said.

Tina sniffled softly, and the zeroed in on the one point in his speech that had jumped out at her. "You think I'm the most beautiful girl you've ever known?" she asked in a whisper.

"I gave you that whole speech and _that_ is the only thing you got out of it?" Artie teased with a laugh. Knowing that she needed the reassurance, he said seriously, "there's never been any comparison Tee, I'm promise."

"Why didn't you ever call me? After it all?" he asked quietly, needing to know why she hadn't reconnected with him even after Lucas and after college.

"I felt guilty," she admitted sadly, "I'd done so many things to you that I wasn't proud of – I mean, I made out with Lucas right in front of you Artie – that's not really something to be proud of. I didn't know how to even bring it up, I thought you hated me. And pretending that everything was okay with us – I guess it just became a ruse after a while. We weren't being honest with each other."

"I thought that you'd fight for me anyway though," she finished in a whisper so soft he had to strain to catch what she was saying, "I thought you'd fight one last time for me and you never did, so I figured I'd lost my chance."

Artie's mind spun with Tina's revelation that she had wanted him to fight for her. As hesitant as she had been since they reconnected about admitting her feelings for him, that one sentence convinced him that she felt just as strongly about him, and that she was just as scared as he was. Artie knew that Tina didn't let go of her heart easily, and she was holding back with him despite their history because as easy as it should have been to go from best friends to lovers, it was also a transition that had the potential to end catastrophically. But Artie didn't want to lose that chance again – he'd already lost her once and he didn't want to lose her again because he wasn't brave enough to take the risk.

"I'm fighting for you now," he whispered, wishing he were right there next to her so he could take her in his arms and convince her of all that he felt for her. "I'll always fight for you," he said, louder, and with more confidence.

Tina felt the tears stinging her eyes, and her body ached to be near his. They'd never be able to fully resolve the time that they'd lost, but she had finally admitted to him that she'd never given up waiting for him, and that one revelation lightened her heart tremendously. As she laid in bed, clutching the phone to her ear and hearing Artie's soft, steady breathing on the other end, she wished that she had stayed in Lima, and that they had had this conversation in person. Her skin yearned for his touch, and she was suddenly aware of how much her senses were heightened by his presence.

"Artie?" she whispered quietly into the phone.

"Yeah Pooh bear?" he answered.

"I fly into Lima on the 22nd," she replied, "I can't wait to see you."

Artie closed his eyes and smiled, his whole being warming with such tender feelings of contentment at her announcement. He felt his desire for her coursing through his veins, and knowing that she couldn't wait to see him either simply made him want her even more.

"I'll be here waiting for you," he replied. He wanted to tell her how he truly felt right then and there, but he stopped himself, knowing that the reunion would be that much more satisfying if he could watch her face and feel her skin against his when he finally said what he'd been waiting fifteen years to say.


	16. Chapter 16

A/N: The reunion. Oh how long I've waited for them to see each other again! Hope you enjoy this chapter!

* * *

><p>Tina, Rachel, and Mercedes flew into Lima at just after four in the afternoon. Kurt had left the previous day, muttering something about not wanting to be in the airport with all the crazy holiday travelers, but Tina had had to work until 7am that morning and Rachel had had a show the previous night. Tina was pretty sure that the three of them had been intolerably giggly on the two-hour flight from New York City. It was mostly Rachel's fault – she whipped out three mini bottles of champagne five minutes into the flight, insisting that she and Mercedes needed to toast Tina, and then they had proceeded to outline in graphic detail just how good they anticipated Tina's holiday would be. Tina blushed furiously as she tried to shush her two cackling friends, shooting apologetic looks to the bemused passengers sitting around them.<p>

As silly as her friends were though, Tina couldn't help but admit that they were right - she _was_ excited to see Artie and to actually be within physical distance of him. In the nine days since that initial conversation, their phone calls had only gotten increasingly sappy – _I miss you_'s were exchanged several times in one call, and _I wish you were here_'s were becoming increasingly commonplace. On one particularly syrupy night after a long day in clinic and an unpleasant four block trek home in the snow, Tina had actually sunk to whining about how it wasn't fair that he was so far away, and how her bed was cold and she needed him there to warm her up. He had teasingly laughed at her for that one, but had promised that he'd make it up to her when he saw her next – in 94 hours, 24 minutes, and 32 seconds, he had said at the time.

Tina knew that they were building up to something – but what that was exactly, she couldn't be sure. Her heart fluttered at the idea of being with him again, to feel his arms around her and to kiss him like she had been waiting to kiss him since she saw him last. But it wasn't simply lust – it had never been just a physical desire. Artie had never explicitly said that he wanted to pursue something serious and permanent with her though, and that worried her. Kurt and Mercedes had tried every which way to convince her that "I'm fighting for you now," meant that he wanted her as a permanent fixture in his life, but Tina wasn't convinced. She needed not to hear it from them, but to see it in Artie's face, and to feel it in his touch.

Their fathers picked them up at the airport, much like they had done each time the girls came home to visit from college back in the day. It had become a tradition of sorts – every year when the trio flew home for the winter holidays, their fathers could be found standing there by the luggage claim, chatting merrily away waiting for their daughters. The tradition had continued after college, though it had lapsed in recent years given Rachel's hectic performance schedule and Tina's ridiculous work hours. In fact, this year was the first year in recent memory that all three girls were on the same flight back home for Christmas.

Tina ran into her father's arms for a giant hug, breathing in that calming smell she had always associated with her father. Despite her rebellion in high school and her constant challenge of her parents' rules, Tina was a daddy's girl at heart, and she thoroughly enjoyed the little time that she got to spend with her parents. As they pulled out of the parking lot of the airport, Tina sent Artie a quick text message letting him know that she had arrived safely and was on her way home. He replied quickly, simply with a smiley face and the words "I can't wait to see you."

Slipping the phone back into her pocket, Tina turned to her father and asked, "so what have you guys been up to, Dad?"

"We saw the Abrams out at dinner last night," her father replied, casting a sideways glance at Tina.

She tried to keep her expression neutral and simply asked, "oh?"

"Elizabeth looked great," he continued, "she was very upbeat and said to tell you thanks again for being here for her during her surgery."

"Oh that's sweet of her to say," Tina murmured with a smile. "So was it just Elizabeth and John out at dinner then?" she asked, curious as to whether her father had had any interaction with Artie.

"No, Artie and Arianna were there too," he replied. And then, with just a hint of tease in his voice, he said, "Artie has grown into such a handsome young man – don't you think?"

Tina blushed, not quite sure what the appropriate response was to her father asking her if the man she had fantasized about for the past several months was attractive. "Y-ye-yeah," she finally stammered, turning an even more obvious shade of red. She silently thanked the stars that her father didn't seem to notice and simply continued driving.

They rode in silence for a while until Tina asked, "so does Mom have plans for tonight then? I might go say hi to Artie later."

"Oh…your mother actually has guests over," her father answered, "she's having that party she has every year with the women from her book club. I think she'd really appreciate it if you stayed home for that? It's been so long since we've seen you."

Tina sighed, nodding her head in agreement. "Yeah, I suppose I should stay for that."

"You could invite Artie if you wanted," he suggested, turning to look at her and raising one eyebrow ever so slightly.

"No, it's okay," she declined, "I'll just go see him tomorrow I guess." Tina was bummed that she wouldn't get a chance to spend time with Artie that night, but she most certainly didn't want to have their reunion played out in front of her parents and twenty-five of her mother's gossipy and matchmaking friends.

Tina spent her evening telling the same story over and over again – yes, she was an emergency room doctor in New York City; yes, she remembered when she was 16 and had pink streaks in her hair; yes, she was sure her parents were very proud of her; no, she didn't have a boyfriend at the moment; no, she wasn't worried about not being married yet; no, she wasn't interested in dating the son/grandson/nephew/neighbor/co-worker's son who was a very nice and handsome boy. By the tenth re-telling and re-hashing of the same answers, Tina had had enough and she politely kissed her parents on the cheek, escaping to her bedroom with the excuse that it had been a long day and she was tired. Her mother let her go without too much of a fight, beaming that Tina had been so cordial to the guests and just exuding happiness that her daughter was home for the holidays.

She fell back against the pillows on her bed, picking at the purple and black comforter that was a vestige of her punk rock high school days. She had never bothered to change the comforter when she'd moved out and there was something about the way the bedspread clashed with the rest of the redecorated and much more neutral colored room that made her smile. It was a reminder of who she had been at one point in her life, and she liked that the comforter remained, echoing the little bit of goth princess she still had inside. Picking up the phone, she settled in to call Artie, laughing at the irony that despite being less than four blocks away from each other, they were still continuing their nightly phone ritual.

"Hey Pooh Bear," he greeted, answering on the first ring. She could hear his chuckle as he used that particular term of endearment. Ever since that first night when he'd called her that again, the nickname had somehow stuck. Artie didn't use it too often – usually only when they were having a particularly emotional conversation, or when they were feeling particularly flirty. The fact that he had been waiting for her call, ready with that greeting on the tip of his tongue made her heart flip-flop.

"Hey handsome," she replied, knowing that he was blushing on the other end of the line.

"Party over?"

"God no," she replied, "I couldn't take anymore. I made my appearance, I charmed them, and I escaped before I had to answer one more question about how I'm turning into an old maid who will forever be alone," she laughed.

He giggled at her assessment of the party conversation.

"My dad said that he saw you guys out at dinner last night," she commented, getting up off the bed to drag her suitcase over to the closet, slowly beginning to unpack her clothes and toiletries.

"Uh, yeah," he replied, sounding oddly nervously.

Tina frowned, debating whether to ask him to clarify his reaction. But before she could open her mouth to phrase the question, he interrupted her and blurted out quickly, "Do you want to come over?"

"Now?" she asked, "I can't! There's all those people downstairs!"

"So?" he retorted.

"They'd never let me escape!" she insisted, "I'd get held hostage and force fed pie because I'm apparently not eating enough and while they're fattening me up they'll set me up with every man within a ten mile radius!"

Artie laughed again, the image of Tina stuck in a chair surrounded by her mother's well meaning friends filling his head. "Just come in how you always used to," he replied, "you know –"

She shook her head. "I'm way too old to be climbing through windows Artie," she giggled, trying to think back to the last time she had climbed in through his bedroom window. It had to have been at least fifteen years ago.

"But it'll be like old times," he said, trying to keep the slight whine out of his voice. He really did want to see her – it had been too long since he'd last been able to touch her impossibly soft skin and smell the intoxicating scent of her perfume, and he ached to be near her body.

There was something in his voice that made her breath catch, and she threw down the clothes in her hand. She could hear the desire in him and it awakened the hunger within herself that she'd tried desperately to suppress. Shaking her head slightly, she grabbed a coat from the top of her suitcase and replied, "I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm on my way – I'll see you in a sec."

She jogged the short distance to Artie's house, noticing that he'd opened his curtains and raised his window just enough for her to climb through. Stepping onto the familiar limbs of the old tree outside his bedroom, she gracefully navigated the natural steps, pulling herself up through the bare branches until her head popped up over the ledge of his large picture window. Artie excited face came into view and Tina couldn't help but smile at him, her chest and her stomach feeling like a million bubbles were fizzing through her as a warm feeling spread all the way down to her toes. Throwing one foot through the window and then the other, she slipped into his bedroom feet first, his strong arms coming across to grab her around the waist and depositing her small form solidly into his lap.

Their first kiss was a collision – a frantic mixing of breaths and lips, hands roaming everywhere and bodies pressed as closely together as their haphazardly arranged position allowed. He slid one hand into her hair, holding her head impossibly close to his as he explored the sweetness of her mouth with his tongue. She reciprocated with a heated passion, pulling and tugging at his shirt, his back, running her fingers up and down his arms and then sliding her hands up the expanse of his stomach, her cold hands connecting with the heat of his bare skin. He groaned, pulling back to gasp a deep breath before reattaching his mouth to hers, drinking in what he had missed in the past two weeks. Their lips stayed attached as he moved his hands to the buttons of her coat, undoing the clasps and slipping the heavy garment off her shoulders. "I've been waiting all night to do this," he whispered, the movement of his words coming through the joined connection of their mouths.

"All those people," she replied, her breath mumbled by her kiss.

"I wanted to get rid of all of them," was his answer, "all I wanted was for you to be here doing this."

And then there was no time for words, as their lips tried to make up for the time apart, and those endless nights of yearning spent on the phone with each other. Tina switched positions, straddling him in his chair and enjoying the new chest-to-chest contact that the position afforded. He took advantage of their tangled limbs to run his hands up her thighs, ending at her hips and pulling her closer against him, eliciting a moan of satisfaction from both of them. Her lips stayed on his, changing their angle slightly so that Artie felt as if they were connected even more deeply, his tongue acquainting itself with the most intimate parts of her mouth and hers reciprocating with just as much affection and desire.

Soon, like with anything else, they drank their fill and their grip on each other relaxed slightly, the heated kisses turning into slow, luxuriously languid ones. Their mouths simply rubbing against each other as they nuzzled their faces, their hands slipping into more daring territory.

"We're awful, aren't we," Tina laughed gently, nipping at Artie top lip before pulling away, his arms catching her hips and pulling her back towards him. "Sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to do this."

"Mhmm," he murmured, licking and sucking a trail down the hollow of her neck, feeling the goose bumps appear on her skin as she pushed herself against him, giving his magical mouth even more access to her delectable skin. Her head was swimming – the way her body reacted to his was completely beyond her control – she lifted his shirt over his head and she registered his groan as she reacquainted herself with the muscles of his chest. She couldn't focus on anything but the taste of him, the feel of him under her hands, and the smell of him filling her senses – she was drowning in his touch. His lips nipped at a particularly sensitive spot just behind her ear and she gasped, feeling his smile against her skin as he continued lavishing attention there until she was squirming in his lap. His fingers tangled in her hair pulling her closer still.

"Tee," he whispered in her ear, his breath hot and sensuous, "if you want to stop, now would be a good time to tell me because I'm not sure –"

"I've waited for you for so long," she whispered against his mouth.

There was no hesitation in his kiss as his mouth met hers again, eagerly finding her tongue. He felt her groan as he ran his hands up the back of her shirt, reaching under it to scratch lightly at the soft skin of her back. Grabbing the hem, he removed her shirt in one smooth motion, breaking their kiss for as short of a time as possible. She sat before him in just her lacy bra and he breathed hard. He watched in slow motion as her hands reached behind her, undoing the clasp of her bra and his fingers shot out to help her remove it.

He wasn't sure he remembered how to breathe.

"What's wrong?" she asked, running one finger down the side of his face. He was staring at her, his mouth slightly open as he took in the sight of her. He looked at her like he had when they'd said goodbye that first night in New York, like she was the only woman in his world.

"You're so beautiful," he smiled. "I need to say this now because I'm not sure I'm going to be able to form coherent sentences for every much longer."

She smiled back at him, encouraging him to continue.

"Tee – you're it Tee. There's no one else for me. You've always been it and…I love you."

She felt tears fill her eyes as she stared into his eyes, so sincere and so full of love. Nodding slowly, she leaned in until she could feel his slow, shallow breathing brushing her lips. She cupped his face in her hands and repeated, "I love you too, Artie."

His grin was bright enough to power the world and he tugged her in, burying his face in the crook of her neck. Slowly, he wheeled them over to his bed and watched as she transferred herself from the chair, shimmying out of her jeans and boots and sitting back against the headboard in just her matching, lacy underwear. He couldn't concentrate on anything but the sheer amount of beautiful skin gracing her body and he groaned as he hoisted himself up next to her, rolling onto his back and pulling her down over him. She leaned in, placing warm, wet kisses along his shoulders as his hands reached up and found her breasts, his palm rubbing lightly against them. Tina moaned as she pulled her lips up from his chest, reattaching them to his for a kiss. She gasped in his mouth as his fingers wandered further, dipping into the waistband of her panties and her hands flew to the buckle of his jeans, undoing them with a practiced ease and pulling her lips away from his long enough to rid him of them.

Artie gasped as she settled herself against him. His hands pulled her mouth back to his and he kissed her feverishly. Her lips were warm and wet and millions of other words that his brain was incapable of forming at that moment. Tina kept her hands on his shoulder and her mouth against his as she slowly began moving her hips, feeling the warmth start to build in the pit of her belly and radiate down to her toes. Her breathy moans sent shock waves through him as he sucked on her neck, her shoulders, and moved down to her breasts, capturing them in his wonderfully magical mouth.

As the depth of the night settled in the room, the only sounds came from their soft gasping breaths, interspersed between her moans of pleasure and his groans of bliss. She arched against him as he pulled his mouth back from hers, asking in a labored voice, "like this?" Her eyes were impossibly dark as they connected with his clouded blue ones and she gasped in pleasure. "Please…" she whispered.

Soon their eyes met again as his hands continued their treasure hunt across her body, seeking out her most sensitive spots. He could see both her love and lust for him in her dark pools of emotion and he blindly reached for the top drawer of his nightstand, the small foil packet shimmering in the moonlight. They soon found a rhythm in their most intimate connection and their moans and sighs filled the night air. He nibbled and sucked on whatever skin he could reach as his hands stayed on her hips, helping her move above him, harder and faster until the tension reached a fever pitch within. She cried out his name as she clenched and shook around him and he felt all semblance of control leave his being as he too reached his peak.

Collapsing against him, she rested her head on his chest. "Oh my god," she panted, trying to catch her breath.

Artie chuckled, pleased with himself. He kept one arm wrapped around her waist as he laid his other hand on her head, slowly stroking the dark strands of her hair. They laid like that, exhausted, until Tina slowly eased herself off of his chest and curled up next to him, looking up to smile at him as he bent his head to kiss her lips tenderly. "Thank you for coming over," he whispered against her mouth, smiling into yet another kiss.

"My pleasure," she replied, laughing softy against their joined lips.


	17. Chapter 17

Artie groaned as he blindly reached for the phone, the shrill chirping annoyingly slicing his cozy cocoon of quiet bliss and making him want to throw the stupid piece of plastic and metal out the window.

"Artie? Is Tina over there?"

"Yeah," he mumbled sleepily, hardly processing the voice on the other end of the line. He crackled open one eye, taking in the feel of Tina entwined against him and wrapped his arm closer around her body. He heard her mutter something indistinguishable as she snuggled in deeper against his chest, her small hand reaching around to settle against the side of his ribcage and one amazingly irresistible leg draping itself over his thighs.

Tina was in his bed, wrapped around his body. It was so surreal it was like a dream and Artie never wanted to wake up. He opened the other eye, squinting at the screen of the cell phone he still held in his hand, searching for the end call button. The words _Call from: Dad_ scrolled across the top of the screen. Call from: Dad.

Shit. His phone definitely did not have a light purple case. And his dad definitely would not be calling from a few rooms away.

"Uh…Mr. Cohen-Chang?" Artie asked nervously, clearing his throat.

"Morning Artie," came the cheerful voice, chuckling. Artie wondered how much longer he had to live.

"We, uh – Tina, uh – we –" he couldn't stammer out the rest of his sentence, his whole body turning beet red as he pushed Tina slightly, trying to rouse her from sleep.

Tina's dad laughed again. "Artie – take a breath son. I'm just calling to make sure that Tina is over there – "

"Uh, yeah," he agreed, trying to slow his breathing. He pushed Tina again, hoping to wake her up but she simply responded by wrapping herself even tighter against his body, pressing her cheek against his bare chest.

"Don't worry Artie – just wanted to make sure she was okay since her room was empty."

"Yep," Artie squeaked out, trying to force some modicum of maturity and confidence into his voice but failing miserably.

"Will we see you at dinner tonight?"

"Uh, yeah, I'll be there," he replied quickly. "I'm excited to see everyone again."

"Sounds good," Mr. Cohen-Chang finished, "we'll see you guys later then. Tell Tina her mom wants her home by five to help with the food and whatever else they do before a get together."

"Okay, yeah. Thanks. Bye."

Artie replaced the phone on the nightstand, setting it carefully next to his own and rubbing his face in his hand a few times, trying to process what had just happened. Leaning down, he pressed a gentle kiss to Tina's bare shoulder, and then the side of her neck, trailing upwards until his lips reached her mouth and she sleepily reciprocated into the satisfying pressure of his lips. His mouth was warm and soft as he visited against hers again and again – she felt him smile and brought her hand up to the back of his neck. Shifting her hips slightly, she grinned as he gasped quietly against her.

When they parted, both of them breathing heavily, Tina opened her dark eyes to look directly into his and the emotion that she saw there made her breath catch in her throat. The desire that had been there last night was multiplied a hundredfold, and the raw love that was there was so pure it reached deep within the chambers of her body. Artie looked at her intently as he brought his hand to her face, brushing his knuckles against the side of her cheek, his fingers caressing her jaw line and his thumb running across the swollen plumpness of her bottom lip.

"I love you" he whispered gently, "good morning."

"Good morning," she replied with a smile, "I love you too." Her thoughts trailed off as she leaned up to press slow, wet kisses against his throat, running her fingers up and down the muscles of his back. His hand came up to her face, pushing her off him gently but keeping her close against his bare chest. She shot him a confused look.

"I just had what may have been the most awkward conversation ever with your father," he said quietly, stroking the hair that was splayed out across her face.

"I think I vaguely heard the end of that," she murmured. Glancing at Artie's nervous expression, she reassured, "oh they're fine with me being here Artie – we're not in high school anymore."

"Still, it's weird," he insisted, "I don't necessarily want to talk to your dad first thing in the morning, and certainly not while you're naked and in my bed."

"Mhmm," she agreed, reaching over to nip gently at the soft stubble against his jaw, "I can think of much better things to do."

Artie smirked, leaning down to give in to her silent demand for another kiss. They had fallen into an understanding of comfort so easily that he wondered if this was what perfection was – if this was what everyone meant when they said that falling in love with your best friend was the easiest and most natural thing in the world. He'd only had Tina this way for less than twenty-four hours and the awkwardness, hesitancy, and fear of the unknown that had defined them for so long already seemed to be only a memory.

"Breakfast is going to be unbearable once Ari and my mother realize that you're here," he whispered, tickling the side of her face with his morning stubble.

"I think I can handle it," she laughed with a fake solemnity.

They burst out laughing simultaneously, a deep throaty kind of laugh for Artie and an infectious giggly burst of happiness from Tina. Pushing her gently towards the edge of the bed, he said jokingly, "move it baby, we've got lots to do today."

Tina wrinkled her nose. "Baby?" she asked, imitating his pronunciation.

"You don't like 'baby'?"

"It's just a little weird – you've never called me that before," she explained, trying to replay his term of endearment in her head.

"Well then – move it Pooh Bear," he corrected with a grin. Tina scooted over to the edge of the bed and picked up his discarded t-shirt from the floor, skimming it over her body quickly. Leaning back to give him a peck on the forehead, she jumped up, throwing a naughty grin over her shoulder at him as she headed into the bathroom.

/**/

Artie and Tina made it back to her parents' house at quarter to five, after popping into Artie's house long enough for him to change in a pair of light gray dress pants and striped button down shirt. Tina's arms were laden with packages from their shopping trip as they walked into her parents' house, and Artie hoped that the chocolates and wine he carried in his lap would keep Tina's dad from killing him after their morning phone call. Tina had reassured him all day that her dad was fine with her spending the night, but Artie wasn't taking any chances.

They were greeted at the door by a fluffy maltese, who jumped onto Artie's lap and immediately started showering him with puppy kisses. Laughing, he grabbed onto the miniature ball of energy to keep the her from squashing the box of chocolates. "At least your dog likes me," he said, turning to smile at Tina.

"Cookie loves everyone," Tina replied, setting down her shopping bags against the hallway closet and taking the dog from him. Holding the small puppy up to her face, she rubbed noses with the little creature and crooned, "don't you, Cookie? You love everyone, yes you do!" The little dog squirmed in her grasp and licked her nose, causing Tina to burst out into giggles. She deposited the puppy back into Artie's lap and exchanged the dog for the chocolates and wine, heading into the kitchen in search of her parents. Artie followed, wheeling slowly so as to not startle the dog hitching a ride in his lap and tried to keep his palms from sweating as Tina's father came into view.

"Artie!" he exclaimed jovially as he released Tina from a hug, "we're so glad you could make it!"

"I'm glad to be here, sir," he replied quickly, reaching out to shake Mr. Cohen-Chang's outstretched hand.

"Artie brought you some chocolate and a bottle of wine, Dad," Tina pointed out, setting his peace offering on the kitchen island.

"Fantastic!" her father replied, "well Tina, your mom is upstairs doing something so why don't you go help her, and Artie and I can just hang out in the family room until your friends get here."

Artie gulped.

Tina gave him a reassuring smile as she headed upstairs, taking Cookie with her. Artie missed the protection of the small dog, and he ran his hand through his hair nervously before looking up at the smiling face of Mr. Cohen-Chang.

"You know, she looks really happy," the older man said softly as he walked into the family room. Artie followed silently, not sure if he was supposed to respond or if he should let Tina's dad continue talking. He chose to simply nod.

"I don't think I've ever seen her quite as happy," he continued, turning to sit down on the large couch so that he was eye level with Artie.

"Well she makes me very happy too, sir," he replied, "this is all pretty new to us still but she completely lights up my life."

"Like I told you when we ran into you at dinner that night – her mother and I really are glad that the two of you reconnected," he said, hoping to ease the nervousness that was so evident on Artie's face, "she's mentioned to her mom how excited she was about coming home this week and getting to see you again and it's nice to see her so happy about life. She works too hard, and we worry."

Artie nodded his head in agreement and wiped his palms along the tops of his thighs quickly before looking up. Clearing his throat gently, he started, "Tina really is everything to me sir – I've missed so much because we were so young and didn't know how to make things work, but it's the real thing this time." Making sure that he still had Mr. Cohen-Chang's attention, Artie continued, "she's my life…I can't – I would never do anything to hurt her sir."

"Oh I can see that in your eyes son," Mr. Cohen-Chang replied, reaching over to clasp Artie's shoulder, "and I see it in hers too."

Artie breathed a sigh of relief.

"When I told you at dinner that you better think carefully about what you're doing here – I wasn't kidding though," he said with a slight edge of sternness, "I see how much you care about her, but the fact of the matter is – you live out in LA, and she's got her life in New York. The two of you are both old enough to know that this bicoastal thing? It doesn't really work."

Artie nodded his head vigorously in agreement. "I've thought about that sir – my job affords me a certain degree of flexibility – if she loves it in New York, then I'll request to be transferred there. If she wants to try out LA, then I'd love for her to come out to the west coast. I can't do a bicoastal thing – I need more than that – I _want _to put in more than that. But I'd never ask her to give up her life to be with me, I respect her too much to ever do that," he assured.

Mr. Cohen-Chang's smile was truly genuine this time, and he reached out his other hand and shook Artie's, silently conveying to the young man his approval. Artie felt a weight lifted from his shoulders – he'd been nervous about Tina's father ever since they had run into each other at dinner a few days before Tina's return to Lima. While he had been happy to see Artie and had been sufficiently cordial, his one word of warning had set Artie's mind spinning. _I'm glad you guys reconnected, and I know she's excited to see you in a couple of days – but just know – if this is some home for the holidays Christmas break fling and then you're going to go to your life and she's going to go back to hers, think carefully because this thing called regret? You guys have had enough of that already. _Artie hadn't mentioned the conversation to Tina, and he was that her father hadn't either. But man to man that night in the restaurant, Artie had nodded, silently promising her father that this wasn't just a fling to him, that she meant so much more. In the back of his mind though, he'd still held the fear that something would once again get in the way of the two of them pursuing what they'd waited fifteen years to pursue – but those fears had dissipated with the first glance he laid on Tina, as she climbed in through his bedroom window that first night back in Lima.

The silent companionship that settled over the two men was broken by the ring of the doorbell. Artie knew it was Rachel and Mercedes before he even wheeled into the foyer, hearing the distinct melody of their laughs from fifty feet away. They attacked him with vigorous hugs, causing him to blush as they commented on how handsome he had become. Kurt's arrival not ten seconds later cemented Artie's embarrassment, as he critically remarked on the "elegant cut" of Artie's trousers and how well the colors of his shirt complimented his eyes. Glancing up at the staircase, he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Tina appear, and had to cover his ears slightly at her excited shriek.

"You'd think they hadn't just seen each other some sixteen hours ago," Kurt muttered at the excited giggles and chatters that filled the foyer.

Artie bobbed his head in agreement. "Apparently nothing has changed with those three," he murmured softly.

"Oh god, if anything they've gotten _worse_," Kurt complained with a smile.

The arrival of Finn and Mike Chang added to the testosterone level in the room, drowning out the giggles of the three women. Tina's father ushered the crowd towards the family room and then escaped upstairs to keep Tina's mother company, leaving the younger crowd to entertain themselves. Tina, Mercedes, and Rachel settled in the far corner by the fireplace, sitting in a circle on the floor with a bottle of wine between them as they talked in hushed whispers. Occasionally, Artie could feel their giggles and glances in his direction and he blushed slightly, knowing that Tina was inevitably telling her friends about him and wondering exactly what she was saying. He focused his attention instead on the basketball game playing on the TV. The guys had settled on the couch around the big-screen television, catching up during commercial breaks and munching on the homemade pita chips and guacamole that Tina's mom had set out on the coffee table. Kurt was perched on the edge of the sofa closest to Artie, flipping through a copy of Harper's Bazaar that he had found under the coffee table.

"So you and Tina," he started, not looking up from the glossy pages of a fashion spread.

"What about me and Tina?" Artie asked curiously.

"Have the two of you pulled your heads out of the sand yet? Or are you still choosing to be nature's most unattractive and awkward bird?"

"Uh, I think we're graduated to being slightly less awkward?" Artie replied, "like flamingos maybe?"

Kurt rolled his eyes at Artie attempt to make fun of his analogy but patted his friend on the shoulder nonetheless.

"Thank god," he said, "it's about time the two of you finally figured it out."

"You and Tina?" Finn asked, turning his attention from the TV to look at Artie, "for real this time?"

"Yep," Artie answered, taking a drink from his bottle of now lukewarm beer.

"Cool," Mike replied, still keeping his attention glued to the play transpiring across the screen. "Awesome!" he finally shouted, "three point shot!"

Kurt rolled his eyes again.

Tina, Mercedes, and Rachel walked by the boys sprawled out on the couch, each holding an empty wine glass with Rachel dangling the now empty bottle of wine between two fingers.

"Who wants food?" Rachel giggled excitedly, "we're so hungry!"

Tina stopped by Artie's chair and bent to give him a kiss on the top of his head, giggling softly against his hair at Rachel's bubbly antics. He pulled her down towards him, settling her into his lap and reaching to give her a proper kiss, darting his tongue out to tease hers before quickly pulling it away. Tina whimpered slightly at the loss of contact and snaked her hand behind his neck to pull him closer, wrapping her warm, moist lips around his and forcing him deeper into the kiss. He could taste the wine she had shared with her girlfriends on her lips and it made the kiss even sweeter as he drowned in the feel of her body against his.

"Aww" came the collective teasing commentary from the peanut gallery, forcing Artie and Tina to break away from each other and smile sheepishly at their friends. Tina blushed, burying her head in the side of Artie's neck and poking her nose into the collar of his shirt. Artie simply rolled his eyes and unlocked the brakes on his chair, rolling towards the kitchen. "It's nothing you all haven't seen before," he deadpanned, "move along – there's food to be had."

The group congregated around the kitchen island, enjoying the spread that Tina's parents had prepared for them. Artie filled his plate with Tina's mother's famous baked corn soufflé, a generous helping of mango chicken, several spoonfuls of spicy cucumber salad, and enough slices of pie and cookies to feed a small army. Every so often as they ate, Tina would reach over and rest her hand around his shoulders, and he rewarded her with a bright smile every time she did, causing Rachel or Mercedes to "aww" silently from across the table.

It was fun seeing his high school friends again for the night, and Artie was reminded once again of how much he had missed in the years that he had lost contact with Tina. While he had occasionally kept in touch with Kurt, exchanging Christmas cards and birthday emails on a fairly regular basis, he had missed the infectious laughs from Mercedes and the never-ending excitement and happiness that seemed to follow Rachel wherever she went. He hadn't known that Mike Chang had started his own dance studio in Chicago and he had missed the opening of Rachel's first Broadway show. He hadn't been there when Mercedes had been honored for her work on behalf of a charity helping to empower young girls through music and singing, and he had missed cheering Finn on when the high school football team he coached made it to the state championships. In choosing to throw himself into his work, he had lost sight of all the people in his life that had made it that much fuller and that much richer in emotion. He marveled at Tina's ability to maintain both her professional achievements and her friendships with their fellow glee club members. He hadn't fought for any of it – for their friendships, for the memories they had, and most of all – he hadn't fought for her. And Artie didn't want it to be like that anymore.

"A toast," he announced to the group of people gathered around Tina's kitchen. Holding up his glass with one hand, he reached over to clasp Tina's hand in the other, bringing it up to his lips to press a small kiss against her palm before turning his attention back to the eager raised glasses around the table. "To good friends, who make every day richer than the one before it, and who I hope, will always be here so we can grow old and wrinkly together."

"To good friends!" they all echoed with a laugh, cementing their bonds with a clink of the glass.

/**/

Artie and Tina had agreed to have dinner together on Christmas Eve before separating for the night to spend the evening and Christmas morning with their families. Not wanting to go out, Artie had invited Tina over to his house, having prepared an easy meal of chicken, rice, and asparagus and simply wanting to spend some alone time with her. His parents and Ari had gone to visit his grandparents, giving him the space and privacy he had politely requested, telling him that they'd be back around eleven.

Tina arrived at just after five, dressed in a beautiful hunter green dress made of silk organza that fell to just below her knees. Her dark hair cascaded around her shoulders and tumbled down her back, giving her an angel-like quality as it contrasted against the white snow outside. Artie greeted her with a soft kiss on the lips and she smiled at him, complimenting him on his smart appearance as she ran her fingers lightly down the silver tie he'd put on earlier and then brushed softly against the sharp edges of his freshly pressed shirt.

They ate in a comfortable silence, enjoying being with each other and the soft caresses that the emptiness of the house allowed. It had been a hectic few days, between Tina's party that night with all of their friends, Christmas shopping, other dinners with their parents and Ari, and the sheer newness of the newfound connection between Tina and Artie. He'd yet to spend a night without her, and Artie shuddered at the thought of having to be separated from her once again when she left for New York after the holidays.

For her part, Tina had had few moments alone to truly think about the changes in her relationship with Artie. She'd gone out to lunch with just Rachel, Mercedes, and Kurt one day while Artie was out shopping with Ari, and over toasted sandwiches and soup, she'd dropped the bomb that she was thinking about moving out to LA. While Rachel had looked slightly horrified at the news, Mercedes and Kurt simply patted her hand lightly as she let out all of the feelings that had been swimming around her brain. She loved her life in New York City, and she had worked for fifteen years to reach the professional success that she had achieved there – but was the allure of personal success just as strong, and could she give it up to start again in LA? Tina knew without a doubt that if Artie asked her to choose, she would choose him – but would she resent him, or worse resent herself for that decision? Kurt had taken her hands in his, whispering strongly – "Tina, I promise you – Artie would never force you to make that decision. He loves you too much to ever put you in that position." That had been echoed by Mercedes pointing out, "the two of you need to work together to figure things out – it's not about you giving your life up to be with him, and it's not about him giving everything up to be with you. It's about compromise – nothing is ever so black and white like that."

As Artie cleared their empty plates from the table and piled them into the sink, she smiled lightly at him, appreciating the handsomeness of his features as they glowed in the warm yellow light of the kitchen. He returned her soft smile, rolling up alongside her chair and asking chivalrously, "can I give you a lift to the sofa, madam?"

Tina giggled, nodding her head and settling herself into the comfortable curve of his lap. When they reached the sofa, Artie kept his arms around her waist, preventing her from rising to move onto the couch and keeping her in place against his body. Sensing that he needed the closeness of her touch, she wrapped one arm around his shoulders and stayed in place.

"Where do you live? Out in LA?" she asked. At his confused expression, she shook her head slightly – "I mean, what kind of house do you live in?"

Understanding what she meant, he explained, "I live about 15 minutes from my office, in a one-story house that I had completely rehabbed and custom built to accommodate some of my needs."

"Oh," she answered, looking down slightly.

Slipping his finger under her chin and raising her head slightly, he asked, "why?"

"It just seems like you're really comfortable there," she answered quietly, "you're settled, and your house is built for you and it's just so…convenient."

Artie knew what the silent question was behind her statement – it was the unspoken issue that neither of them dared to touch. "Hey," he said softly, looking into her dark eyes, "it's just a house."

Tina sighed. "I know," she murmured, "I was just thinking that, you know, Christmas is tomorrow and then New Year's is in a couple of days, and then I'm on call after New Years so I have to fly back to New York, and…" she trailed off, not quite sure how to continue.

"I can move to New York Tee," he announced quietly, holding both of her hands in his with his face just inches away from hers, "I'm not tied down in LA, and if you're in New York, I can move to the city."

Tina gasped quietly at his declaration. In all of the scenarios she had run through in her head, she hadn't expected this to be one of them. She had run through ideas of bicoastal relationships, and navigating the distance between LA and New York, and even the idea of relocating to LA, but she'd never once expected Artie to simply drop everything and move to the city.

"But you're – all of your recording artists are in LA, and you're successful there," she pointed out. "I could be a doctor anywhere," she added quietly.

"But if you don't want to be a doctor anywhere, if you're happy in New York, then I can move," he reiterated, "there are recording studios in New York."

"I was thinking about relocating to LA," she confessed, "your house – you're settled there and it's already customized so that things are convenient for you."

"It's just a house," he repeated, whispering the statement quietly into her ear. "It's just a house. I can get another one anywhere – _we_ can get another one anywhere. If you're happy in New York Tee, then I want you to be happy. Our friends are there, and you love your job there. I just want to be _with you_. I don't care what city we're in."

"I've missed _this_ for fifteen years Tee," he continued, "I don't want to wait any longer to be with you."

Taking his face in her hands, she kissed him tenderly, trying to pour as much love and appreciation into the kiss as she could. He reciprocated with just as much emotion, tasting the slightly saltiness of her tears and running his fingers down the curve of her neck and along her arms, needing to feel the silkiness of her skin under his fingertips. "Tina?"

She looked at him as he caressed her cheek with the pad of his thumb, "I mean that, that I don't want to wait to be with you, well not just be with you in that sense, but I mean, be with you, like _with you_ with you."

She smiled at him, and he felt a sense of relief wash over him. He thanked God that he had managed to say the right thing to get through to her.

He leaned in to press their foreheads together. "We've – there's been a lot of unspoken things over the past fifteen years Tee – and a lot of unresolved emotions that kept us apart," he saw her try to interrupt him, and he pressed one finger against her lips, asking her to let him continue, "but one thing has always been true for me Tee – no matter how awkward it ever was, or how hurt I was by what I saw or how hurt you were because I didn't talk to you about things – the one thing that's always been true –" he took a deep breath before continuing, "the one thing that's always been true is that I never once stopped loving you. Ever."

A slow, teary smile spread across her face. "Really?"

"Really," he confirmed, pulling her into his body and drawing her close into a hug. "And – " he tucked his head into the crook of her neck, breathing in the warm scent of her skin before continuing, "Tee, I need you so much that it scares me sometimes – I, I don't know how I managed for so long without you but these past few months – it's like I just can't stop thinking about you, and I just word vomit gushing about how much you mean to me," he finished sheepishly.

He felt her breath against his ear as she whispered to him, "Artie – I feel the same way." He shuddered lightly as he felt her fingers start to rake through his hair and massage his scalp, and he groaned as her hand brushed against a particularly sensitive spot behind his ear, "I love you, Artie Abrams."

He released a breath that he didn't know that he was holding. Turning his head, he nuzzled the side of her neck gently, kissing upwards with the lightest of feathery kisses until his lips reached her mouth. They took their time, enjoying a slow, leisurely kiss that confirmed the depth of their feelings for each other, and the reassurance of knowing that the other person felt the same. The kiss melted into a series of soft, lingering caresses and when they finally broke apart, they were both smiling.

Artie reached into his pocket, pulling out a small box and holding it out towards Tina, motioning for her to take it in her hands. She looked at him curiously, not sure what to do and a little scared as to what she would find inside.

"Open it," he encouraged gently. Her nimble fingers fumbled slightly before raising the cover of the soft velvet, gasping softly and searching his eyes wildly for an explanation. Reaching over to take the box from her hands, Artie pulled the small ring from its nest of black velvet and held it between his fingers. It was a simple ring – a thin band of platinum with a small row of delicate, channel-set diamonds running along the length of the ring.

"You know in the movies, how they always end the romantic ones with the two people sitting there, old and in love after having lived their whole lives together, and the guy always says something like – 'I knew the first moment I laid eyes on you that you were the one?' – I'm that guy Tee," he looked up at her eyes filling with unshed tears and continued, "I've known since that first moment I laid eyes on you that fifty years from now, you'd still only be the only one for me."

He took a deep breath before continuing, and he watched Tina take a wavering breath as well as a soft tear slipped down her face.

"It may have taken us fifteen years to get here, and I have no idea what the next fifteen are going to be like but I know Tee that I want to be there for the next fifteen, and the next fifteen, and the fifteen after that. So this ring – it's not an engagement ring – but it's my promise to you – I want to be there for you, _I will_ be there for you."

"Look inside the ring," he instructed gently.

"I'll always be here – until that day, if there ever comes a day when we can't be together…" he started.

"Keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever," she whispered, reading the inscription on the inside of the small band. "Winnie the Pooh" she connected.

Artie smiled and shrugged his shoulders gently, "well, I figured the bear has been good to us so far."

She crushed her lips to his, her palms warm against his chest as she pushed her tongue past his lips and slid it against his, exploring his mouth. Artie wrapped his arms around her waist, slipping the ring onto her finger as he kissed her back passionately, groaning as her hands brushed his face, his neck, and the soft coolness of the metal on her finger made contact with his skin.

When Tina pulled back, her lips were slightly parted and her eyes softly glazed over. She brought her hand up to her face, smiling at the sparkle of the diamonds against the soft light filtering in from the kitchen, and ran that hand down the side of his face, smiling into the caress of his eyes.

Artie grinned, catching her hand in his and pressed a kiss against the inside of her palm. "I love you, Pooh Bear."

- End -

* * *

><p>AN: I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for taking the time to read this story, to write reviews and to send me your comments, questions, and suggestions. It's quite a journey that Artie and Tina have been on as they reconnected with each other after so many years, and it's a journey that wouldn't have been possible without the encouragement and support of my readers. From the bottom of my heart - thanks again for reading and I hope you enjoyed the story!


End file.
